527 
“ Ou tlie western side of the ridge upon which the Hospital now stands, a q^uarry 
has been opened. The rock quarried is a very ferruginous fine-grained argillaceous 
sandstone; but the percentage of clayey matter is not so high as in the beds more 
immediately above. Beneath this, now covered by water', lies a bed of fairly porous 
reddish sandstone, the thickness of which has as yet been undetermined. The escarp- 
ment of these beds can be easily traced round to a point on the western bank of the 
Norman, within six yards of the bank of the river. 
“ Similar sections are seen in a conspicuous cliff which can be traced along the 
Cloncurry road as far as the Ifour-niile Creek, and also at intervals along the Burketown 
Road, near Selection 72. 
“ At the Red Bluff, twenty miles north-west of Normanton, and on the western 
bank of the Norman Kiver, a tableland of Desert Sandstone identical in physical 
characters wfith that forming the rest of the district occurs. Its summit is sixteen feet 
above high-water mark, and nowhere is the lower portion seen, being concealed beneath 
superficial accumulations, which here attain a considerable thickness. 
“ A very thin capping of the concretionary sandstone of Desert Sandstone age 
overlies the ‘ Rolling Downs ’ formation, on a ridge about ninety feet above the sea, 
at Magowra Station, between the Bynoe and Norman Rivera.” 
The Stokes Range, to the north of Magowra, is a tableland of Desert Sand- 
stone rising to ninety or a hundred feet above sea-level. The Reap Hook Range, further 
to the south, is a similar Desert Sandstone tableland. The poverty in nomenclature 
which applies the epithet of “range” to such elevations m.ay be noticed in passing. 
In the Cape York Peninsula the Desert Sandstone is well developed. It is moat 
conspicuous at Mount Mulligan, on the left bank of the llodgkinson River, where it 
rests unconformably on the vertical greywackes and shales of the llodgkinson Hold 
Rield. As seen to the west of Woodvlllo, the lowest bed is a coarse conglomerate, with 
a grey matrix of granite d6bris. The pebbles of this conglomerate are mostly of quartz 
and quartzite, with a few of porphyry and granite. Some are of hardened greyvvacke 
and a few of hardened shale. The conglomerate is about sixty feet in thickness, and 
contains occasional partings of red shale or laminated mud. The next succeeding bed is 
of rod sandstone, and forms mural precipices one hundred and fifty feet high, without a 
single practicable gap in a distance of ten or twelve miles. The Mount Mulligan 
Plateau, a few years ago, was one of the strongholds of the Aboriginal population.* Prom 
the summit, the Desert S.andstone can be seen in isolated tablelands stretching far to the 
west. Mount Mulligan is probably about 1,000 feet above the level of the sea, while 
the greywackos and shales of the Hodgkin.son Gold Rield rise in the range between 
Thornborough and Kingsborough, to an elevation of 2,530 feet. This range must have 
formed part of the shore of the waters in which the Desert Sandstone was deposited. 
The late Rev. J. E. Tenison Woods gives the thickness of the sandstone beds of Mount 
Mulligan as six hundred feet,"! which is obviously an over-estimate. 
From the head of Limestone Creek, a tributary of the Mitchell, south of May- 
town, I saw, in 18s7, that some of the low hills south of the Mitchell were capped^ by 
korizontal beds of stratified rock, probably the continuation of Mount Mulligan. This 
is the place referred to by Mr Norman Taylor, the Geologist who accompanied Hann’s 
Expedition in 1872, who has kindly placed his notes at my disposal 
“ At Camp XVI., on the Mitchell River, which was also Camp LXXVIII. on our 
return journey, I found in the river-bed fragments and blocks of coal shales, with thin 
* Report on the Hodgkinson Gold Field. By R. L. Jack. Brisbane : by Authority : _18S4 
t The Hodgkinson Gold Field, Northern Queensland. Trans. B. Soc. Vtct., 1881, xvii., p. l. 
