RELATIONSHIPS OF THE AUSTRALIAN CAINOZOIC SYSTEM. 
Stratigraphical Notes bearing on the Sequence of the 
Strata. 
A. — The Port Phillip Area. 
A boring at Sorrento close to the Port Phillip Heads has 
been lately put down by the Mines Department of Victoria to a 
depth of i,693 feet,* The results obtained from this, perhaps the 
most valuable boring from a scientific stand-point which has yet 
been made in the Cainozoic strata in this State, sets at rest any 
doubt as to the succession of these beds. In the marls from 
1,310-1,426 feet there are bands of Vaginella eligmostoma, a 
pteropod occurring in the fossil beds at and above sea-level at 
Mornington and Grice’s Creek, about 18 and 22 miles to the 
north-east. This difference in level of the same strata between 
the two places within so short a distance is explained 
by the fact that the great Dandenong to Cape Schanck 
fault cuts between the two areas ; Sorrento, being on the down- 
throw side, and Mornington and Grice’s Creek on the upthrow side. 
These lowest beds of the bore are proved by their fossil contents 
to be of Balcombian age. In the same boring Janjulcian marls are 
distinguished, at 990 and 758 feet, by containing typical Spring 
Creek fossils, as Eutrochus fontinalis and many others. From 
741 to 585 feet Limopsis beaumariensis and other typical Kalimnan 
fossils denote this portion to belong to the upper series. Above 
this again, the Werrikooian or Upper Pliocene is represented probably 
between 585 and 489 feet ; whilst above this comes a Pleistocene 
and Holocene succession of estuarine muds and sand-dune rock. 
The Cainozoics at Sorrento were not bottomed at 1,693 feet. 
Judging from the exposure of Mesozoic shales with Thinnfeldia on 
the foreshore south of Grice’s Creek, it is highly probable that the 
Cainozoics at Sorrento may rest on these same Mesozoic rocks. 
Following the Port Phillip coast-line in a north-easterly direction 
beyond Dromana, we find, at the north end of Balcombe’s Bay, typical 
Balcombian blue clays with septaria containing Vaginella eligmostoma. 
F"!(xl. Section at Po'ht 6. of Cememt WoftKS.U^co^aE's bav 
This bed passes upwards into a grey marl with gypsum crystals. 
Going southward from the Cement Works past the low point with 
tumbled ferruginous grits (Fig. 1), a shallow indent in the coast 
*See Ann. Report, Dept. Mines, Viet., for 1910 (1911), p. 152. 
[ 26 ] 
