OUE COAL A>-B COAL POETS. ' 121 



APPENDIX. 



OUE COAL AND COAL POETS. 



The seeming favour with vrhich my papers on coal subjects were received by 

 the Eoyal Society, and by the pubhc, caused me to be anxious, lest by any 

 possibility I might have made wrong or delusive statements in my advocacy of 

 railway communication with the southern coal fields, in order to command the 

 coal trade from those parts in connection with Port Jackson. Such anxiety 

 made me determine to visit the localities, so as to satisfy myself that I had 

 not been holding out a phantom or a shadow for the grasp of public enter- 

 prise ; and having been to Illawarra by the proposed road for the railway line, 

 I think it is my duty to make a statement of the result of my inspection. 

 This I will therefore do, and am happy to be able to preface my remarks by 

 saying that such inspection has been highly satisfactory, and far exceeds my 

 preconceived ideas of the practicability and value of tbe proposed project. 



I was accompanied by a friend. We left Sydney and passed by Cook's 

 Eiver, and over George's Eiver by the punt. We then continued on our 

 course by the Bottle Forest line that leads to Wollongong, when we rode at a 

 brisk pace over a remarkably easy yet rising gradient ; and in the course of 

 21 miles I took and noted nineteen observations of the aneroid at various 

 defined spots, and at positions which I determined by marking trees and num- 

 bering such as I went along. The result of this went to prove that the rise 

 was extremely gradual throughout the whole line of 21 miles, and which 

 reached an elevation of 864 feet for the whole distance, as the approximate and 

 barometrical height. 



The result gives only a rise of 42 feet in each mile, or 1 foot in 125 ; or, 

 practically, the whole of this excellent road can be cantered over from end to 

 end, except where there are a few light depressions and corresponding rises, in 

 the last 3 or 4 miles ; but the whole of which can be avoided by diverging the 

 proposedrailwaylinea very little to the eastward and along the top of the eastern 

 slopes of the Port Hacking Creek, which are almost immediately by the Bottle 

 Forest Eoad. The whole line is perfectly firm, is based with sandstone, and 

 for some miles it is bestrewed with sunken clay ironstone ore, which ore I 

 judged, from its ponderousness in the hand, to be quite rich enough for smelt- 

 ing, when the coal and it can be cheaply brought together. 



During the whole of these 21 miles not a single bridge or culvert would be 

 required for a railway Une, beyond ordinary small drainage culverts. In other 

 words, this part of the road is so singularly good that to form it into a first- 

 class double railway line would involve no other expense than to shape it, to 

 free it from obstructions and to lay down the permanent way and rails at the 

 least possible expense, when it could be traversed with speed from end to end, 

 and going or coming. 



So much then for the first part of the proposed road, which must be 

 traversed by the line from whatever pass of the Illawarra coast mountain the 

 railway might pass from the sea levels to the table-land.* For reasons that 

 will be obvious presently, I do not expect that the Coalcliff proposed line will 

 continue any further along the Bottle Forest Eoad than to about the turn-oiF 

 at 21 mUes from Greorge's Eiver to Stanwell Park, near Coalcliff, which is dis- 

 tant about 3 to 4 miles from such turnoff. 



* The last survey in November proved the fallacy of this remark, by reason of our 

 having found a vastly superior route through the Port Hacking Valley, and by means of 

 tunnelling through the Bulgo range. 



