364 
PROCEEDINGS OE SECTION C. 
Rev. W. B. Clarke appears to have visited the Darling Downs also in 
the capacity of a geologist. The former remained two years in the 
district, and laid the foundation of geological research within the 
coastal district of what is now Southern Queensland. It does not 
appear that there was any further systematic geologising — at any rate, 
under the auspices of the Government — previous to the erection of 
Queensland into a separate colony ; but the work of discovery was 
continued at the hands of the amateur geologists, who are ever with 
us. Coal was found at Moggill, on the left bank of the Brisbane, and 
at the Coal Ralls abovo Ipswich ; also outcropping in the gullies of 
Goodna and Bundanba. It also soon became known that deposits of 
ironstone existed, which with the coal and lime of Ipswich might soon 
do the State some service. Under present conditions, however, the 
working of iron is not one of the industries which has taken root or is 
likely to take root in the colony, where all the disadvantages of com- 
mencing a new industry are met with, where the market would be 
necessarily limited, and where the manufactured article can be delivered 
at a very small advance of price on that prevailing in the great manu- 
facturing centres of Great Britain, and where also there are so many 
openings for the employment of capital that it is quite unnecessary to 
risk a loss by adventuring into any enterprise the success of which 
may be in any sense questionable. 
The only other mineral or metal discovered and utilised in the 
pre-separation days was the noble metal, gold, and there are many old 
colonists who look with mingled feelings to the memorable rush to 
Canoona, on the Fitzroy, in 1858, when even the town of Rockhampton 
had not sprung into existence, and the whole district, except as to a 
few pioneer squatters and their employees, was a terra incognita to all 
the world. Diggers, however, with that reckless disregard of prudent 
precaution which was so characteristic of that nomadic class in the 
fifties, rushed in thousands to what was only hoped, on very 
meagre data, to prove an extensive alluvial goldfield, but fouud in 
many cases only disappointment, want, and misery. There was no 
provision for the multitude of diggers — no money to buy even if there 
had been food to sell— and little or no gold to be obtained by digging. 
It remained for the Government to step in and charter steamers to 
relieve the congested diggings, where only a very little gold was 
obtained, although it was really the parent goldfield of the colony, 
which during the interval since elapsed has extended and expanded its 
production until it now ranks on a par with Victoria, the great gold- 
producing colony. § / 
~\Ve have no record of the amount obtained m those days, but in 
the month of December, in the year 1859, when the colony was 
separated from New South Wales, the amount was 24f oz., of the 
value of £87, which grain of seed has now developed into an annual 
production of over 600,000 oz., which it has more than averaged for the 
past seven years; and, judging from the production of recent yeais, is 
likely to be continued for many years to come. A marvellous develop- 
ment of an industry commencing at the foundation of the colony with 
the insignificant item abovementioned, coal being represented with 
432 tons, value £289, the only other mineral production. 
But geological research and mineralogical discovery followed, if 
it did not keep pace with, the geographical knowledge and pastoral 
