GEOLOGY OF THE KEMPSEY DISTRICT. 163 



the district; at present I am inclined to favour the idea of 

 dislocation of a single bed by faulting. The limestone belt 

 extends more or less continuously in a general B.S.E. to 

 W.N.W. direction for upwards of 22 miles, and may be even 

 more extensive inland. At various points limestone caves 

 are developed, as at Yessabah, Moparrabah and Sebastopol. 

 None of those examined by me are of great extent or con- 

 spicuous beauty, but I was informed that some of the 

 caverns to the west of Sebastopol are finer than any of 

 those I saw. In one place on Tait's Creek there is said to 

 be a fine natural bridge across the valley. 



The most extensive development of limestone is at 

 Sebastopol, where a magnificent escarpment of this rock 

 rises about 1,000 feet above the valley of Tait's Creek. 

 The main mass of limestone is about 250 feet in thickness, 

 and forms a vertical wall of cliff at the summit of the steep 

 slope above mentioned. The rock is very dense and some- 

 what crystalline, but an abundant and fairly well preserved 

 fauna has been obtained from it, proving its age to be 

 Permo-Carboniferous. The facies of the fauna suggests 

 that the horizon of the limestones here may be the same 

 as that of the limestones at Pokolbin in the type district 

 of the Hunter River. The bed dips N. 10° W. at 25° to 28° 

 and the slope in that direction from the summit of the cliff 

 is fairly gradual. 



Towards its base the massive limestone reef passes into 

 flaggy argillaceous limestone and this into chocolate and 

 blue calcareous shales, which support a dense subtropical 

 "brush" on the southern side of Sebastopol. This "brush" 

 hides the continuation of the section at this spot, but in 

 the clearer timbered country to the east it is found that 

 the shales pass downwards into chocolate mudstones strik- 

 ingly like those of Lochinvar on the Hunter, and, like the 

 latter, containing numerous erratics, some of which are of 



