Early Days in North Queensland

by Edward Palmer

Edible shrubs are extremely plentiful, and are of great value when grass becomes too dry to be nutritive. A peculiar feature in the vegetation of the western plains is the “roley-poley,” which is called in America the “tumble weed.” This is an annual of quick growth after rains, growing in a spherical form from a common root; when the stem dries, it breaks off close to the ground, and the ball of dried vegetation is driven by the winds over the plains at a furious rate, topping the fences, and piling up against them in masses. It causes the greatest consternation to horses as it is driven across the downs. It possesses no virtue as a fodder plant.

FOSSILS OF ANCIENT AUSTRALIA.

The Australian continent has undergone great changes during the past geological ages, and most probably has been connected in remote times with part of Asia, and not unlikely with South America by some now submerged land. But whatever the connection may have been in the very distant past, it has been shut off from the larger northern land masses at so remote a period that the higher forms of mammals have not found their way to it, as in Africa and South America. Great changes have taken place in the continent itself. It is supposed that, at one time, in what is called the cretaceous or chalk age, a great sea spread from the north right across from what is now the Gulf of Carpentaria, covering immense tracts of level plain country in the interior of Australia, including Western Queensland, and part of New South Wales, so that the western half of the continent was separated from the eastern at least in the northern parts. Gradually the land rose and great lakes were formed in the interior, especially in the region of Lake Eyre, and a growth of vegetation sprang up of a more luxuriant type than is to be found now in those western parts, otherwise the enormous animals, such as the giant diprotodon, huge extinct kangaroos, birds larger than the moa, as well as crocodiles and turtles, could never have found sustenance to multiply in such numbers as their fossil remains testify they did in nearly every part of central Australia, and in the interior of North Queensland. In this sea, which washed the base of the mountains on the west, was deposited the sandy formation which has become the level inland plains. From some cause so far unknown, the land became desiccated, the lakes lost their freshness, and became great salt pans, the vegetation and the animals dependent on it became extinct, until a dry and arid region was produced, with a river system that fails to reach the sea, but becomes absorbed in the great sandy interior. The smaller types of marsupials of a hardier nature and capable of removing to greater distances for food, maintained their existence, while the giants of a similar race have left only their bones embedded in the drift to testify to the mighty changes that Nature has wrought out in the past ages. Fossil diprotodons of gigantic size and struthious birds rivalling in stature the New Zealand moa, are found in Central Australia. At Lake Callabonna in the great salt Lake Eyre basin, there are hundreds of fossil skeletons of these animals, many of which have been removed to the Adelaide Museum. In that locality they are found most frequently on the surface of the dry salt lake, and have been preserved by a natural coating of carbonate of lime; the bones are found at various depths.

Nearly the whole of interior Australia, including Western Queensland, is one vast cemetery of extinct and fossilised species, scattered along the surface, or buried deep in cement or drifts, and in clays hidden beneath the present surface formation. The open plains of the Upper Flinders disclose great deposits of marine fossil shells, belemnites and ammonites, and also remains of extinct animals. On the Lower Leichhardt River, in the Gulf of Carpentaria, forty or fifty feet beneath the alluvial deposits forming the banks of the river, and firmly embedded in the hard cement, which is an ancient drift formed of water-worn stones in an ironstone clay, are found the bones of innumerable extinct gigantic species of animals that found sustenance and multiplied in enormous numbers over the Gulf country in some far back pre-historic age. On the Walsh River are found large numbers of fossils, mostly shells of the ammonite species. The bones that have been buried for countless ages in these ancient drifts are well preserved, and are not very dissimilar in appearance to the bones of animals dying recently on the surrounding plains, although they are completely fossilised and changed into the appearance of stone. The utter extinction of these gigantic species, comprising diprotodon, nototherium, and zygomaturus, and other species, grasseaters and flesheaters alike, can only be accounted for by a great change of climate, and great and long-continued droughts, reducing the herbage and causing the remaining living animals to crowd into the drying-up lagoons and lakes, there to become bogged in thousands, and die as the stock die in the waterholes after a long drought. Some of the fossils are those of animals of a gigantic size, much larger than any existing native animals; the teeth found are twice the size of an ordinary bullock’s, and the jaws carrying them are of enormous size and strength. There are remains of alligators over thirty feet long, and turtles of much greater dimensions than any existing in the present day. The vegetation in the marshes and territory forming North Queensland must have been of a luxuriant and tropical description in those days to have supported such large types of marsupials—animals that would require a more abundant moisture, larger rainfall, and heavier foliage, than are now to be found on the western slopes of the ranges. Deeply interesting is the study of the ancient forms of life that roamed over the densely-wooded marshes of the interior, when the flora represented a type found now only along the rich alluvial banks of the rivers on the east coast.

GEOLOGY OF QUEENSLAND.

The following facts are summarised from the geology of Queensland written by Mr. Daintree, as the result of his investigations, whilst prosecuting the search for new goldfields on behalf of the Queensland Government in the northern portion of their territory, as also from the official reports of the Geologist of Southern Queensland, and other sources.

The consideration and history of the different formations will be taken in their sequence of time, as far as the stratified or sedimentary rocks are concerned. The igneous rocks will be described under the various groups of Granitic, Trappean, and Volcanic.

Aqueous:—
	Alluvial (recent).
	Alluvial, containing extinct faunas.
	Desert sandstone, Cainozoic.
	Cretaceous Oolitic Carbonaceous	} Mesozoic
	Carboniferous Devonian Silurian	} Palæozoic
Metamorphic.

Alluvial.—Fresh-water deposits skirt all the present watercourses, but the accumulations are insignificant on the eastern watershed, except near the embouchures of large rivers, such as the Burdekin, Fitzroy, etc. On the shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria, however, and in the south-western portions of the colony, where the watercourses have scarcely any fall, and where in seasons of excessive rain the country is nearly all inundated, fluviatile deposits are very extensive. Though the dense lavas of the Upper Burdekin (volcanic outbursts of a late Tertiary epoch) are traversed by valleys of erosion, in some cases 200 feet deep, and five miles broad, yet very narrow and shallow alluvial deposits skirt the immediate margin of the watercourses draining such valleys. It is only near the mouths of the larger rivers that any extent of alluvium has been deposited, and even these areas are at the present time in seasons of excessive rain, liable to inundation, showing that little upheaval of this portion of Australia has taken place since the last volcanic disturbances terminated.

The meteorological or climatic conditions during this period were nearly identical with those of the present time, heavy rains during the summer months causing violent floods, removing seaward the aërial decompositions and denuded materials from year to year.