Mem. Nat. Mus. Vict., 14, 1944. 
AN ARTEFACT, PROBABLY OF PLEISTOCENE AGE, 
FROM KEILOR, VICTORIA 
By D. J. Mahony, M.Sc., 
Director, National Museum of Victoria. 
Plate V. 
Some 35 years ago Mr. G. Moreton Riley, the well known 
amateur telescope maker, noticed part of a large pebble pro- 
truding from a low cliff of silty clay on the right bank of the 
Maribyrnong River about 30 yards downstream from the mouth 
of its tributary Salt Creek (Green Gully), a mile south of Keilor 
as the crow flies; Keilor is 10 miles north-west of Melbourne. 
The pebble was about 5 ft. above the base of the cliff and 4 ft. 
below its top; and, since it was the only one visible in the 
fine-grained material, Mr. Riley forced it out and then saw that 
one end was flaked to form the cutting edge of a primitive axe or 
chopper. 
In February of this year he brought the specimen to the 
Museum, and his description of the position where he found it 
suggested that it had been enclosed in a Pleistocene terrace 
deposit. In view of this, he kindly arranged to accompany Mr. 
R. A. Keble and Miss Hope Macpherson (who had mapped the 
terraces in this locality) and myself to the place. In the years 
that have elapsed since the implement was found, the river has 
cut back its right bank for some yards and has destroyed the 
original site, but Mr. Riley pointed out the corresponding position 
close by in the existing bank of similar fine-grained material. 
The river hereabouts has cut its channel through Pleistocene 
flood-plain deposits (compacted silt with occasional layers of 
small rounded quartz pebbles) into the underlying Silurian strata, 
and the flood-plain deposits now form terraces on both its banks. 
Short descriptions of the three main terraces in the Maribyrnong 
River valley, namely, the Keilor, the Braybrook and the Mari- 
byrnong Park Terraces, and evidence of their Pleistocene age 
have been published elsewhere (Mahony, 1943 b). The river bank 
from which the specimen came is part of the youngest of 
these, the Maribyrnong Park Terrace, the surface of which is 
here about 19 ft. above the river bed; Mr. Keble and Miss 
Macpherson have measured the levels in this locality and found 
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