Australia Twice Traversed: The Romance of Exploration, Being a Narrative Compiled from the Journals of Five Exploring Expeditions into and Through Central South Australia and Western Australia, from 1872 to 1876Giles, Ernest
History
Australia Twice Traversed: The Romance of Exploration, Being a Narrative Compiled from the Journals of Five Exploring Expeditions into and Through Central South Australia and Western Australia, from 1872 to 1876
Giles, Ernest
Australia -- Discovery and exploration
passage to it for our horses. The hills were quite destitute of
timber, and were composed of huge masses of rifted granite, which
could only have been so riven by seismatic action, which at one time
must have been exceedingly frequent in this region.
I may mention that, from the western half of the Musgrave Range, all
the Mann, the Tomkinson, and other ranges westward have been shivered
into fragments by volcanic force. Most of the higher points of all the
former and latter consist of frowning masses of black-looking or
intensely red ironstone, or granite thickly coated with iron. Triodia
grows as far up the sides of the hills as it is possible to obtain any
soil; but even this infernal grass cannot exist on solid rock;
therefore all the summits of these hills are bare. These shivered
masses of stone have large interstices amongst them, which are the
homes, dens, or resorts of swarms of a peculiar marsupial known as the
rock wallaby, which come down on to the lower grounds at night to
feed. If they expose themselves in the day, they are the prey of
aborigines and eagles, if at night, they fall victims to wild dogs or
dingoes. The rocks frequently change their contours from earthquake
shocks, and great numbers of these creatures are crushed and smashed
by the trembling rocks, so that these unfortunate creatures, beset by
so many dangers, exist always in a chronic state of fear and anxiety,
and almost perpetual motion. These hills also have the metallic clang
of the Bell Rock, and are highly magnetic. In the scrubs to-day Gibson
found a Lowan's or scrub pheasant's nest. These birds inhabit the most
waterless regions and the densest scrubs, and live entirely without
water.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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