302 
FINAL REPORT. 
report to his Excellency the Governor, containing an account of 
two most disastrous attempts to head the Great Australian Bight, 
I have, accompanied by one of my native boys, made a third 
and more successful one. On this occasion, I with some diffi- 
culty advanced about fifty miles beyond the head of the Great 
Bight, along the line of high cliffs described by Flinders, and 
which have hitherto been supposed to be composed principally 
of chalk. I found the country between the head of Fowler’s 
Bay and the head of the Great Bight to consist of a succession 
of sandy ridges, all of which w T ere more or less covered by a low 
scrub, and without either grass or water for the last sixty miles. 
This tract is of so uneven and heavy a nature that it would be 
quite impossible for me to take a loaded dray across it at this 
very unfavourable season of the year, and with horses so spiritless 
and jaded as ours have become, from the incessant and laborious 
work they have gone through during the last seven months. 
Upon rounding the head of the Bight, I met with a few friendly 
natives, who shewed me where both grass and water was to be 
procured, at the same time assuring me that there was no more 
along the coast for ten of their days’ journeys, (probably 100 
miles) or where the first break takes place in the long and 
continuous line of cliffs which extend so far to the westward of 
the head of the Great Bight. Upon reaching these cliffs I felt 
much disappointed, as I had long looked forward to some con- 
siderable and important change in the character of the country. 
There was, however, nothing very remarkable in their appearance, 
nor did the features of the country around undergo any material 
change. The cliffs themselves struck me as merely exhibiting 
the precipitous banks of an almost level country of moderate 
elevation (three or four hundred feet) which the violent lash of 
the whole of the Southern Ocean was always acting upon and 
undermining. Their rock formation consisted of various strata, 
the upper crust or surface being an oolitic limestone ; below this 
is an indented concrete mixture of sand, soil, small pebbles, and 
shells ; beneath this appear immense masses of a coarse greyish 
limestone, of which by far the greater portion of the cliffs are 
