8 
The Grampians Sandstone. 
From Stawell the Grampians appear as a grand rampart of mountains 
to the westward. They rise to a height of about 3,000 feet above the sea- 
level and consist of a succession of beds of siliceous sandstone that range 
from a few inches to many feet in thickness. The quarries which furnished 
the stone used in building Parliament House are 18 miles westerly from 
Stawell and connected to it by a railway; a considerable amount of work 
has been done but the real heartstone of these quarries is only just reached. 
The strike of the beds is N. 10 deg. W. and the dip is 31 deg. W. One 
set of joints (secondary) strikes W. 10 deg. S. and dips 85 deg. S. The 
master joints strike N. 20 deg. W. and dip 60 deg. E. In the quarries 
the stone least altered by atmospheric influences is very white and on 
exposure it weathers grey. There are hundreds of different beds of sand¬ 
stone in these mountains and they are sure to be diverse from each other in 
many particulars. The minute grains of silica appear to be cemented 
together by white clayey material, and on exposure to the atmosphere the 
rain doubtless acts on the siliceous grains and dissolves a minute quantity 
which is again deposited on or near the surface forming in time a skin of 
material much harder than the interior of the stone. 
At the quarry the beds range from 1 to 10 feet thick. The master joints 
are from 2 to 20 feet apart, and the vertical joints from 40 to 60 feet apart. 
The stone opened up in these quarries is valuable for building purposes. 
There is practically no limit to the supply and a line of rails connects the 
quarries with Stawell. The cost of quarrying, now that the quarries are 
well opened up, should not be great, as the master joints are of the utmost 
assistance in getting out the stone. In this connexion it may be mentioned 
that the beds are under such enormous pressure that when freed from the 
top bed, the bed underneath often arches up slightly. Besides the uses to 
which this stone can be put for building purposes, there should be some of 
the beds that might be used for grindstones, scythe-stones, and other 
abrasive purposes. 
It is a fault of some of the beds that there are embedded in the fine¬ 
grained material small quartz pebbles—“ flinties ” as the masons call them 
—and these are troublesome to deal with in dressing the stone. When fresh 
from the quarry the stone is moderately soft, but it hardens on exposure. 
As this range is 50 miles long and up to 3,000 feet high, and extends 
on the surface for miles in width, and is all composed of sandstone, some 
idea can be formed of the limitless supply of stone available. It should be 
of great service for the masonry of reservoirs, &c. 
With the endless supply of valuable stone, and the facilities that exist 
for quarrying it and delivering it to the railway, this industry should 
be capable of very great expansion. 
This sandstone range is a great store of water, and as the dip is to the 
westward, there might be some prospect of obtaining artesian water by 
boring into it further westward, for outcrops of these sandstones occur for 
30 miles W. of the main eastern range. 
No fossils have yet been discovered in these beds. On the surface of 
some of the beds are curious raised discs that may be the markings caused 
by rain drops. At Hall’s Gap, on the road to the gold workings on Stony 
Creek, there are three sheets of an igneous rock closely resembling the 
Snowy River porphyry. The petrology of these sheets and their relations 
to the Grampian sandstones have yet to be worked out, but if the rock 
proves to be true Snowy River porphyry intercolated with the sandstones, 
then the age of the latter must be Lower Devonian. The sandstones at 
this point are reddish ana purplish in colour. 
