Australasia: Eight Lectures Prepared for the Visual Instruction Committee of the Colonial OfficeSargent, A. J. (Arthur John)
History
Australasia: Eight Lectures Prepared for the Visual Instruction Committee of the Colonial Office
Sargent, A. J. (Arthur John)
Australasia -- Description and travel
At Victoria, on our way up, we leave the train for a coach drive,
to Jenolan. Here the scenery changes; the rock is no longer
sandstone, but limestone, and the streams have burrowed out many
curious gorges and underground channels as in our own Derbyshire.
Here we have one of these in the form of a huge rock archway 19
through which we catch a glimpse of the country beyond; while
far down below us flows the stream which bored out the arch. A
little further on we find the stream running at the bottom of a 20
lofty cavern, and out into a deep and narrow gorge. Here again
is a view of the interior of one of these caverns, with its huge
pillars hanging from the roof and rising up from the floor.
These limestone tunnels and gorges, and the sandstone valleys 21
with their steep surrounding cliffs and narrow outlets, are a
fine subject for the artist and tourist in search of beauty, but
do not suggest opportunities for settlement or farming; at the
same time they are evidently a serious obstacle to movement.
The bare surface of the plateau is little better; in fact, the
highlands in this district are still among the most thinly
populated areas in New South Wales, in spite of their nearness
to the capital and the oldest settlements. So we pass through
quickly, and coming out by a long tunnel drop down to Lithgow, 22
where we enter an entirely different kind of country. Lithgow
is a manufacturing town, with coal mines, ironworks, smoke and
dirt. It really belongs to the coast region, and is here, on the
inside of the ridge, only because a small piece of the Newcastle
coalfield, which underlies all the country which we have been
crossing, crops out in this district from under the sandstone. On
our journey inland we shall not meet with any other town of the
same type, as we are now entering the great wheat-belt of Eastern
Australia.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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