45 



occurs running in a slanting band right up the cliff from 

 bottom to top. Where these conglomerate bands form the 

 tops of the hills, the tops and sides are covered with water- 

 worn stones. Other observers have mentioned the occur- 

 rence, but failed to note that the conglomerate bands in this 

 Finke River sandstone were the source of the boulders and 

 pebbles. They have nothing to do with the modern Finke 

 River, as we now know it. The Finke River was not in 

 existence when these conglomerate beds were formed, for they 

 do not extend in that direction, so far as the writer is aware. 

 They appear to have been brought by a swiftly-running river 

 of pre-Cretaceous age, for these sandstone beds underlie the 

 Cretaceous shale beds. Turbulent bedding characterizes the 

 sandstone beds in which the conglomerate occurs. Tate and 

 Watt came to the conclusion that these stones surrounded an 

 imaginary lake that was held back by the table-topped hills 

 at Cunningham Gorge, and that the lake-waters ultimately 

 burst through the gorge and scattered the stones about. The 

 absurdity of such an explanation makes one wonder whether 

 they were serious in propounding such a theory. Later on 

 Professor Tate set out the probability of the stones having 

 been brought there through ice action. In the writer's opinion 

 the only thing not quite in accord with the "river" explana- 

 tion is the presence of very large and intensely hard quartzite 

 boulders, which, as before stated, are up to two tons in weight. 

 But seeing that they may have been derived from the post- 

 Ordovician conglomerate beds, a swiftly-running stream, such 

 as the sandstones and conglomerate indicate, would meet the 

 case. The writer has failed to find any grooves and scratch- 

 ing on the boulders to suggest ice action, and the mode of 

 occurrence does not suggest morainic material. 



From the comparative absence of conglomerate in these 

 beds along the Finke route (contrasted with the abundance of 

 the same along the Hugh route), one is led to the conclusion 

 that the main drainage from the MacDonnell Ranges formerly 

 came by way of the latter, viz., in pre-Cretaceous times, and 

 that the course of the Finke River and Ellery Creek through 

 the Krichauff (James) Ranges is of more recent development. 

 The comparatively narrow Glen of Palms, Todd Glen, and 

 others, e.g., lend some weight also to this supposition. 

 Immense erosion, of course, has taken place since the Finke 

 assumed the present course, for at its inception it flowed over 

 the top of the Krichauff Ranges, gradually cutting its way 

 down through the sandstones, quartzites, limestones, and 

 shales of which that range is composed. Great erosion trans- 

 pired in all the older series of rocks before the Finke River 

 sandstones, etc., hereafter mentioned (following Brown) as 



