Compiling information on this topic was commenced in 2007 for private study

and was connected with other LachlanHunter worldwide info gathering on

remarkable 'big trees' and fossil forests.  ( The Fennel Bay compilation

work is ongoing - by John Byrnes, geologist; together with Michael

Organ at the University of Wollongong Library who has a special

interest in Rev. W.B. Clarke.  The kick-start to this work was

Michael's OCR/correcting of the key W.B. Clarke paper

Viz. http://www.uow.edu.au/~morgan/forest.htm )

 

The topic meshes in or mirrors with some of Michel Organ's 1990 work

"Coal and Controversy: the traumas of Reverend W.B. Clarke ..."

Viz. http://ro.uow.edu.au/asdpapers/33

 

~ Kurrur Kurran ~

Kurrur Kurran (Fennell Bay) fossil forest was in 2009 nominated to the State Government

as a State significant site.   Already much from there has probably been lost.  Please

contact the writer, at john.mail "@" ozemail.com.au, if you know anything.   This 

webpage seeks/documents any information connected with the fossil forest.

Kurrur Kurran is at what is now called Fennell Bay.  It is one of Australia's best known and earliest recognised petrified forests.   It is a quite instructive case of considerable loss of heritage because it is sadly now just a shadow of what it was when first sighted by whites.   Supposedly much of the formerly visible fossil forest has simply been souvenired or removed for fates such as garden ornamentation.   Clearly no great malice is really involved, and it is not 'vandalism',  yet it has gradually come to pass that the fossil forest has gone on 'disappearing' over recent time by continued depredation.   The Australian nation moved to formally apologise to descendants of the aboriginal race for what is known as the "stolen generations" history (when many mixed-race children were removed from black mothers to 'save' and civilise them, as was thought  to be for their own good) but who actually 'stole' the trees of Kurkur Kurran - that is not yet well known but maybe some may remember.  If some may even still have removed pieces of the forest in their backyard they might like to contact this writer about it or supply more facts?  

 

 

Birds that "walk on water" - the

Fennel Bay Fossil Forest

as currently seen

 

On 31 Oct 2009 - photos by Anthony Dunk

Black swans and fossil trees in the lake, near Aldon Cres, Blackalls Park.   As seen in older photos and drawings the fossil forest was once much more prominent in the bay.   It has now grown obscure, due to people having taken away many pieces of the silicified trees, and it is no longer prominent above water level.   Branagan and Vallance (2008) wrote of the fossil forest that now "sadly it is only a ‘shell’ of  its condition as first observed by Clarke. Many of the stumps were souvenired over the years .......".     No doubt this is true and very much has been removed, and yet the bases of most of the fossils trees are presumably still in place, as it is most doubtful anyone would have tried excavating such below water level.

Leah, Nola and Kerrie (pictured below) who document themselves as true descendants of the Lake Awaba (Lake Maquarie) original inhabitants, the Awabakal people, have remarked inter alia "so much has been lost through greed".  They may not have had the trees of  the fossil forest in mind when saying that but it may apply - this geological treasure has been gradually disappearing.  All sorts of interesting facts have been connected to this site and there is no doubt much left to be still discovered about it.   Apart from the original description by the 'Father of Australian geology', the Rev. W.B. Clarke, there has been little geological research attempted.

According to mythology, recorded by the missionary Reverend Lancelot Threlkeld in the 1830s this is a  place where people were turned to stone for wrong-doing:   "Kur-kur-kur-ran.  The name of a place, in which  there is, almost, a forest of petrifactions (sic) of wood of various sizes, extremely well defined.  Situated in a bay at  the N.W. extremity of Lake Macquarie.  The tradition of the aborigines is, that formerly it was one large rock which fell from  the heavens and killed a number of blacks, which were assembled where it descended, they being collected together in that spot by command of an immense iguana, which came down from above for that purpose.  In consequence of his anger at their having killed lice by roasting them in the fire, those who had killed the vermin by cracking were previously speared to death by him with a long reed from Heaven ... When the iguana saw all the men were killed by the fall of the stone, he ascended up into Heaven, where he is supposed now to remain, and they point out the stars which they say represent his form in the sky."  [ There are slightly different variants of this found, and.  D.A. Roberts, H.M. Carey and V. Grieves in "Awaba: A Database of Historical Materials Relating to the Aborigines of the Newcastle-Lake Macquarie Region", University of Newcastle, 2002, used the place name spelling "Kur-rur-kur-ráu", citing the source as being from "Common Places" listed in Threlkeld (1838) "An Australian Grammar), pp. 82-85.  ~  http://www.newcastle.edu.au/group/amrhd/awaba 

Rev. Lancelot Edward Threlkeld (1788-1859), missionary and language student.   After missionary work in the Pacific Islands,

Rev. Threlkeld arrived in Sydney in 1824 and established his mission at Lake Macquarie in 1825. His

pioneering work with the Awabakal people was one of the few attempts to thoroughly determine

and record the grammar of any indigenous Australian language.

(ca. 1850s, Ambrotype, MIN 45)

 

 

Lancelot Threlkeld as a much younger man.  (Source:  Newcastle Regional Library per Scanlon 2007)

 

(Burial place:  Rookwood Cemetery Grave 1672/4, Independent Section.  The remains of  Sarah Threlkeld, wife of Rev. Lancelot Threlkeld, who died in December,  and Threlkeld himself who died in 1859, were removed to there in 1901 on the authority of their daughter-in-law, Esther, the widow of Lancelot E. Threlkeld Jnr.)

 

Lancelot Edward Threlkeld was at first an actor then a businessman.   In 1808 he married Martha Goss, who bore him five children.  He became influenced by bishop Cradock Glascott and became an itinerant field preacher assisting the Rev. G. Moase, a Calvinistic Methodist.  In 1814 he applied to the London Missionary society and was ordained after brief courses in theology and medicine by the Congregationalists before leaving for the South Seas in 1816.  Mrs Threlkeld lost her first child and was very ill at Rio de Janiero, and she later died in 1824 at the Society Islands.  Threlkeld then moved to Sydney and established a mission to the Aborigines, the Governor granting him land for this purpose at Belmont near Reid's Mistake (Swansea).   In Sydney, in 1824 he married Sarah, daughter of Dr Thomas Ardell of Cattai Creek near Windsor, and Sarah too would have five children.   The mission was costly, and Threlkeld argued with Rev. Samuel Marsden over financial matters.   Threlkeld engaged in grazing and coal mining to try and help with the expenses.  He opened his first coal mine in 1840 and persevered with coal mining till 1845 (after the mission was officially closed in 1841 and the Threlkeld family moved to Sydney). 

 

 

Evangelion ureni ta Jesu-umba Chris-ko-ba upatoara Louka-uemba
[The Gospel according to St Luke, translated into Awabakal by L.Threlkeld, completed 1857.]

 

In 1829 Governor Darling granted Rev. Threlkeld  1280 acres of land on the western shore of Lake Macquarie, comprising what is now Coal Point peninsula and Toronto.  Threlkeld built a two story building of ten rooms to house his family, together with quarters for convict servants and the usual outbuildings.  In 1831 the mission moved from its initial site at "Bahtahbah" (Belmont) to the new station which they named "Ebenezer".   It is believed to have been on the hill where the Toronto Hotel now stands.

Lancelot Threlkeld completed his work of translating the Gospel of Saint Luke into Awabakal by 1857.   But it was too late, the Awabakal had gone.   They had almost all left the area around Threlkeld's mission (then called Ebenezer, now known as Toronto) by 1838, having gravitated to the Newcastle area where work could be found.   Thus there was soon enough nobody left to convert, and the mission was in the end a failure at least in that regard.   Threlkeld moved to Sydney, abandonning his lakeside mission as a hopeless cause.  Sydney socialite Lady Franklin described him as a dingy elderly plain man, and he did not easily fit in with the establishment Anglican society as he had fought very bitterly with Rev. Samuel Marsden.  The gifted and dedicated linguist died two years after he finished his by then pointless gospel translation into Awabakal.   In his preserved Journal is copies of many letters in and out from the mission.  His mentions of many things to contemporaries may now be of interest.  For example on 17 February 1840 to Thomson he mentions a horrible report that came his way of what he called a "treacherous murdering System":  "I am just informed of a transaction most revolting to every feeling of Humanity, namely the mixing of poison with rum and water and giving it to the Aborigines .. died about the place like Rats!", and some who transferred this information "exulted in the transaction as a capital way of getting rid of the Blacks without the interference of the Government".   Threlkeld thought "Surely the Relatives of these murdered Blacks cannot possess  the feelings of  human nature if they do not endeavour to be revenged".   Threlkeld was clearly shocked at things he heard, and he actually tried to investigate further (in Newcastle) this story of poisioning, by Prussic acid, but could not get very far.  As to the facuality this is one of the stories specifically referred to as a "myth" by Keith Windschuttle in his "The myths of frontier massacres in Australian history, Part III
Massacre stories and the policy of separatism" (Quadrant, December 2000).

Threlkeld's official reports are historically/socially interesting, whatever their ultimate accuracy, and they do contain many references to unequal killings of the blacks.   He reported, as best he could know, that in the six years from 1832 to 1838 the natives had killed fifteen Europeans but within only the prior two years upwards of five hundred Aborigines were killed in "numerous massacres of men women and children" (including by the "Horse police commanded by Major Nunn").   He called it "indiscriminate slaughter" which "blotted the Colony with the foul stain of innocent blood" against the Law of God.   He stated that section by section the land was being sold out from under them, until there was no place left for the Aborigines - "We are a Christian nation, commanded to 'love thy neighbour as theyself' .... As a Nation we have placed ourselves in a position that has compelled the Aborigines to become our neighbours, and we have worked ill towards our neighbours, because we, the many, dispossess the few Blacks of their rights of birth ..."   Threlkeld made many recommendations for improvements etc. in his reports (quotes are from the Annual Report of the mission for the year 1838).   In his 1839 report he commenced comparison of the Aboriginal "Dialects" with those of Indians (e.g.  "The Aboriginal phrase  Bunnunbanung I shall smite thee, shows at once the similarity of construction of this Aboriginal Language with that of the Indians of America, for although I write it ..?.. thus: Bunnun banung because I know the word to be the conjoined dual pronoun, yet it is pronounced as one world, and would be so considered by a stranger.   If determination is to be expressed the participle wal  must be inserted thus: Bun-nun-wal-bunung.  I shall and will smite thee.  Analysed thus: Bun the root of the verb to smite; nun the particle denoting futurity; wal denotes determination;  ba  .... [etc. and goes on to compare with a Delaware dialect]" - from draft or copy of the mission's 1839 Annual Report as in his Journal) . 

Rev. Dr. John Fraser (1834-1904), the author/editor of the consolidation of Threlkeld work in the 

form of  'Threlkeld 1892.  An Australian language as spoken by the Awabakal ....".

(Source:  Maitland City Council.)

 

    

 Biraban (?1800-1846), also known by his English name of "John McGill".  Perhaps this is who spoke of "Kur-kur-kur-ran".

Threlkeld had trained an Awabakal man known as Biraban or McGill to teach him the language.   Horatio Hale, an American philologist visited Threlkeld's Lake Macquarie mission in 1839 (as part of the United States Exploring Expedition) and recorded that it was very evident that McGill had been accustomed to teach his native language, for whenever he was asked the name of any thing, he would pronounce the name very distinctly and slowly, syllable by syllable.   Biraban was given this English name because he worked as a servant to Captain M. Gill at the military barracks in Sydney.   Biraban might also be an assumed name from when he returned to Awaaba (Lake Macquarie) as it meant  'Eagle Hawk' in the local language and which was probably a high name.  Previously he was known as Johnny M'Gill, or "We-pohng" and he was probably born about 1800.  When Threlkeld commenced his mission, at first on the eastern side of the Lake in 1825, at Reid's Mistake (Swansea), Biraban was of great assistance to him.  Biraban instructed Threlkeld in tribal lore and absorbed the principles of Calvinist Christianity from Threlkeld.   Biraban gave daily instruction in the language and corrected the missionary's transcripts.  The language had been recorded to writing by 1829, with a first draft of St Luke's Gospel completed.  Threlkeld commended Biraban's 'intelligence and steady application' to the government and the Governor publicly honoured him at the annual feast the Aborigines at Parramatta in 1830.  There Biraban was presented with a brass plate inscribed "Barabahn, or MacGil, Chief of the Tribe at Bartabah, on Lake Macquarie", officially recording this as a "Reward for his assistance in reducing his Native Tongue to a written Language" ( Sydney Gazette, 12 January 1830).    Threlkeld described Biraban as 'a very valiant athletic man'.   His above portrait derives from  the United States Eploratory Expedition on their visit to Lake Macquarie in 1839.   Biraban did not long survive the closing of the mission in 1842 and he died in Newcastle in 1846 at a relatively young age (Sydney Morning Herald, 1 May 1846).   Biraban was deceased when Threlkeld in 1850 wrote his "A Key to the Structure of the Aboriginal Language".   In that Threlkeld inserted a Preface "Reminiscences of Biraban" in which he praised his dead friend and teacher as an intelligent, honourable and sensitive man.

An ardent philologist, George Grey, who was one of the keenest admirers of Threlkeld's researches into Aboriginal languages,  repeatedly requested a copy of the St Luke Gospel translation.   The ageing reverend eventually obliged, sending a handwitten version described in the preface as his 'fourth revision'.  The inscription at the front of the manuscript reads: 'His Excellency Sir George Grey, K.C.B., from the translator and writer of this book, with respectful compliments. Sydney, N.S.W., June 26th, 1858.'   Grey had Threlkelds Awabakal Gospel illustrated and bound in red morocco, as the above photo shows, and it now resides in the Auckland Library.

 

 

 

Threlkeld's Lake Macquarie journal, open at December 1829.  Thanks to Mrs Marjorie Raven, the great grand daughter of

Lancelot Threlkeld, this important Journal has been digitised.and uploaded to the web.

The original, which covers the period from December 1828 to around February 1846 has unfortunately been lost.  It was in the possession of an owner in Cattai.  He loaned it to Mrs Raven who then lent it to the Mitchell Library who digitised the full manuscript including additional papers belonging to Mrs Raven.   The Journal was returned to the owner but following his death cannot be found.  Every avenue of locating that was pursued by Mrs Raven came to no avail, causing great concern for the fate of such an important historical document.  The digitisation has been now uploaded by the University of Newcastle - Virtual Sourcebook for Aboriginal Studies in the Hunter Region     (Source:  Gionni Di Gravio, University Archivist, University of Newcastle)

Threlkeld, L.E. (Lancelot Edward), 1788-1859. [Manuscript] A Journal Kept By Lancelot Edward Threlkeld. Missionary. [87 Mb PDF]

A few extracts from this are herein but unfortunately there is little re the area for the year 1842 as by then Threlkeld had probably moved his family to Sydney.

(First printed 1827, reprinted in 1892 ... the notes of Rev. L. Threlkeld on native language.)

About the place name:   In 1842 Rev. W.B. Clarke wrote his first scholarly paper on geology to be sent back to England: "On a Fossil Pine Forest at Kurrur-Kurran, in the inlet of Awaaba".   A manuscript or working copy map of Lake Macquarie annotated in Clarke's handwriting, probably in 1842, still exists (Branagan and Vallance 2008).   It vaguely confirms that Clarke did write down the place name on it as "KurrurKurran" (no hyphen?) (or could even be KurranKurran as the writing is not perfectly clear).   It has not been discovered that Threlkeld has recorded what the name may mean.  The above excerpt is from the 1892 book "An Australian language as spoken by the Awabakal: the people of Awaba or Lake Macquarie (near Newcastle, New South Wales) being an account of their language, traditions, and customs".   Not an easy language to master !?   The present writer can merely guess from Threlkeld's "Australian language" that it may mean a triple-cold/chilling place, a puzzling or even fearful place.  It certainly did seem to "chill out" Clarke when he beheld the scene there - as indicated by what he soon afterwards wrote of it :  that  "... in few places in the world can the quiet and daily processes of natural growth and decay, the forms of living and dead things, and the successive changes and reproductions of matter, owing to the operations of most powerful though secretly evolving causes, be so prominently displayed, as in this singular picture of the past and the present".    Did the fossil forest convert the clerygman to any greater belief in powerful secretly evolving causes?  Years later Clarke became at least an admirer of Charles Darwin's work.  He wrote to congratulate Darwin and offer his own observations.  In Origin  (p. 373)  Darwin noted "From facts communicated to me by the Rev. W.B. Clarke, it appears also that there are traces of former glacial action on the mountains of the south- eastern corner of Australia".  Although he admired and supported Darwin, Rev. Clarke did not embrace the theory of evolution and still remained a "separate creationist" (Moyal 2003).    In fact, according to Moyal,  virtually ALL of the colonial scientists rejected Dawin's theory of evolution by natural  selection without the hand of the Creator, for at least two decades after the Origin book arrived in Australia (fide "Platypus" by Ann Mozley Moyal).

 

 

 

 

Modern descendants:  Awabakal women Leah, Nola and Kerrie (nee Powell), who are the authors of 

"THE TRUE DESCENDANTS FROM THE AWABAKAL TRIBE".  Finding L.E. Threlkelds journal and

 other historical records opened many doors for them to construct family history.  ("We will keep on with

our research until we can find nothing else, because all the records must be kept for our future generations.

Who knows, maybe someone out there will come forth with more documentation, then we can build from

that, more for our future, as so much has been lost through greed.  What we want to keep in mind is that

we are all human beings, whatever the colour, we all have rights and as fellow human beings we all need

to be treated with respect and courtesy. We want to bring together the story of Ned and Margaret and

 their family to share with others as this is a unique story of the Awabakal people and a fitting way to

honour them"  - Nola, Leah and Kerrie.)  (University of Newcastle Wollotuka School of Aboriginal Studies).

 

What might the giant Goanna story mean?

The giant goanna story is curious.

Does it have any 'particular' meaning.    There is a large goanna carving known near Mount White; so is there any particular reason why that was carved as unusually large - and in any case 'does size matter' much in rock carvings anyway?    To some extent relative size might reflect perceptions of importance but this is very much doubted to have much consistency.   Archaeologist Tessa Corkill (pers. comm.) has locally considered the "does size matter" question to some degree for rock art carvings.   She compared the relative heights of engraved men and women who were within one metre of one another at 16 sites on both sides of the Hawkesbury River, between the Boree Track in the north and Belrose in the south.  Over this range were known 16 sites at which there are 20 couples and 2 threesomes.  The figures varied in height from 2.99m (a male at Mt Ku-ring-gai) to 58cm (a female at Smiths Creek).   In this small exercise (unpublished), Tessa found that in all but one of the couples and threesomes not only were the women shorter than the men they were with (a not surprising finding seeing that females are statistically smaller) but in the majority of cases they were proportionally far, far shorter than would be expected from "real life" average ratio (and some were only 50% of the man's height).   This does suggest that size differences are likely sometimes significant (cf. also if the carver wished to depict children).  However, as there are Innumerable other possibilities which can be envisaged in the circumstances of carvings being made it is not surprising if there is no particular consensus on such things.

In the case of the large goanna engraving this has been photographed by Mr Bob Pankhurst (pers. comm.) and Bob notified of it in response to reading this webpage about the Kurrur Kurran legend, stating "The work on Kurrur Kurran is excellent; I couldn't help wondering when I read it if an engraving of a giant Goanna I found at Mount White has anything to do with the legend. The drawing is about 4 m in length .... I always wonder when I find a drawing of any animal that is well over life size if it depicts megafauna or a totem. Note the unusual curled end on the goanna's tail".   Here's the unusual tail as Bob noted:

Curious goanna tail shape noted by Bob Pankhurst, on a ca. 4 m long goanna carving at Mt. White.  (Photo: Bob Pankhurst)

It's curious why anyone bothered to carve a goanna as big as four metres long anyway !?

On top of that, why not just continue the tail straight to its tip?   Why go to any extra trouble to make it twisty?   Did Megalania have a twisty tail?   Some seem to imagine it did (although other depictions/'reconstructions' do show a stumpier tail a wiggly one is shown below):

When the missionary L.E Threlkeld in the 1830s recorded the tradition about an

immense goanna or iguana it likely suggested nothing in particular(?).

Nowadays it may remind one of the Megalania.

 

 

The BBC (Science and Nature) states about Megalania:

 

~~~~~

Megalania, giant ripper lizard - Megalania prisca

When the first people reached Australia, they encountered the largest lizard that had ever lived.

Statistics - Body length: 5.5m; Weight: 400kg.

Physical description - The giant ripper lizard is a varanid lizard or goanna like the living Komodo dragon. It looked very similar to the Komodo, but was more robust and had a proportionally shorter tail. Its serrated teeth were more widely spaced and more curved than those of a Komodo. It had very large claws on its feet.

Distribution - Fossils have been found in South Australia, Queensland and New South Wales.

Habitat - They lived in open woodland and grassland.

Diet - They were carnivores. It is likely that giant ripper lizards both caught their own prey and scavenged, as the Komodo dragon does today. Extrapolating from the habits of the Komodo, it could easily have caught prey of twice its own weight, and could have tackled animals of up to 10 times its own weight. A fully grown giant ripper lizard would be able to tackle even the largest Diprotodon.

Behaviour - Giant ripper lizards were most likely ambush predators.

Reproduction - They laid eggs as all varanid lizards do, but so far none have been found as fossils.

Conservation status - Giant ripper lizards are extinct.

Notes - A complete skeleton of a giant ripper lizard has never been found.

Records - At 5.5m long, they are the largest lizards to have ever lived.

Best place to see - Giant ripper lizard fossils and reconstructions are on display at Monash Science Centre, Monash University, Clayton in Victoria State, Australia; and the Wonambi Fossil Centre, Naracoorte Caves National Park, South Australia.

Closest relative - The perentie or gigantic lace lizard (Varanus giganteus).

 

~~~~~ ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/wildfacts/factfiles/3046.shtml  )

 

The Christian religion (via missionary activity) fortunately saved this little bit of mythic information about gigantic iguana/goanna by recording it, albeit that what it actually means now seems more than a little obscure or puzzling - for why is killing lice an action that merits death as punishment?   Was the fossil forest just a conveniently tangible means for passing on memory that once upon a time a great lizard really did kill humans? 

Who can tell, and the entire concept of supposed 'cultural memory' persisting meaningfully - as a valuable conveyor of information - over many generations is doubted by some.

Geologically it is at least a possibility that ancestors of the people of Lake Macquarie did once see Megalania, and it is interesting to reflect upon.

It's also highly possible that Megalania sometimes did kill humans.

Much more dubious is that the 'cultural' memory of such could be preserved by passing into legend, perhaps intended as a warning originally but then maybe not staying firm over time.

Facts can be stranger than fiction?   This woman said that a dingo took her baby at Ayers Rock, but a nation

did not believe her and she ended up in prison charged with murder.    Public opinion was not very

sympathetic to her largely because she and her husband were reported in the media as having

funny religious ideas.  The final judgement was that she was misjudged unfairly.

When the Azaria Chamberlain case raged many 'experts' proferred contradictory views on how dangerous dingo dogs might be to humans.   As for Megalania, or even its living relative the Komodo dragon, there is very much less doubt of the potential lethal danger.

 

It is written - an immense iguana came down to here, descending from heaven for the

purpose that those who had done wrong should be punished (turned to stone).

  And after this was done he returned to heaven where he may still dwell.

(This is as was secured by the Rev. Lancelot Threlkeld's work.)

 

 

As for twisty or straight tail I note a school girl named Lorraine drew it with twisty tail too (see below) but I've not yet met a true Megalania expert to ask about this matter.   Even the vary name of the giant reptile has been subject to (Latin/Greek) confusion.  Note the BBC calls it the Giant Ripper Lizard.   Others maintain that this is wrong and the word Megalania means "great roamer" (Greek Μέγας "great" + ἀλαίνω "roam").   The name Megalania prisca was coined by Sir Richard Owen to mean "Ancient Great Roamer." A name he made "in reference to the terrestrial nature of the great Saurian" (Owen 1859).  To do this Owen used a modification of the Greek word ἠλαίνω ēlainō ("I roam").   Apparently it is the close similarity to the Latin word lania (femine form of "butcher") that has resulted in numerous taxonomic and popular descriptions of Megalania which mistranslate "Ancient Giant Butcher",  "Giant Ripper Lizard" and so forth.

Geology is certain that a great lizard that 'might' have been well capable of killing humans did once exist in Australia.  Its living close relative is the  Komodo dragon of eastern Indonesia.   Komodo dragons  can grow up to three metres in length and weigh up to 140kg.  In March 2009 an Indonesian fishing boat landed on Rinca Island for the men to take a rest and look in the jungle for sugar apples (fide local police deputy chief Benny Hutajulu).   Suddenly a dragon grabbed one of the men by the leg.  His friends rushed to help him and the dragon let go.   The victim was bleeding badly and was hurried towards the nearest hospital but died on the way.    Clearly they will attack humans, and in 2008 a group of European scuba divers who became stranded on Rinca island had to 'fight off' a dragon.

When Rev. Lancelot Threlkeld recorded the story of the giant iguana (goanna) the remains of Megalania in Australia had not yet been discovered.   And the question 'could cultural memory survive for thousands and thousands of years' is a very much debated thing too.

It seems very likely that it was Rev. Threlkeld who told Rev. Clarke (the 'father of Australian geology') about the fossil forest at Kurkur Kurran.  At the time Clarke went there (1842) the theory of evolution was very little thought of.  Evolution was soon to become the unifying theory of the the life sciences and a great aid to geology, providing logical explanation for the descent/ascent, ramification and diversity of all life. 

Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" was not published till 1859 however, and in the year 1842 Australian scientists interested in natural history and matters geological struggled to interpret the Earth, and reconcile with what the Bible states, in different ways.  At the time Rev. W.B. Clarke had formed the opinion that the coal measures (wherein the fossil forest of Kurkur Kurran .was recognised to be situated stratigraphically) was of Jurassic (Oolitic) age.   Clarke believed that Kurkur Kurran supported this view, which he had formed before visiting there, as he thought the Fennell Bay fossil forest was a "perfectly analogous case with the I. of Portland" (Letter of 16 July, 1842, to W.S. Macleay in Sydney.  Reproduced by Branagan and Vallance, 2008, J. Proc. Roy. Soc. NSW, Vol. 141).

What Clarke was referred to at "I. of Portland" in Dorset is a well known fossil forest west of Lulworth Cove that is a classic geological locality with the remains of late Jurassic coniferous trees of Cypress or Juniper type that are rooted in a calcareous palaeosol called the "Great Dirt Bed" (viz. http://www.soton.ac.uk/~imw/Fossil-Forest.htm ). 

It is from the surviving correspondence between W.B. Clarke and W.S. Macleay that we know more precisely when Clarke visited the fossil forest and also see some confirmation of the likelihood that Clarke learned of it from Threlkeld (even though Clarke's rapidly written and despatched paper on the forest that he sent back to England that same year does not acknowledge Threlkeld).   In a letter to Macleay of 1 July 1842, Clarke wrote near the end "When I can spare time I am going to Lake Macquarie.  Threlkeld has sent me a box of specimens".  Clarke's next letter to Macleay, on 16 July 1842, was probably written as soon as he got back to Sydney from visiting Lake Macquarie and Newcastle, and even before he proceeded back to Parramatta from Sydney Cove.   In the letter he hurried to inform Macleay "I have to tell you but not now, of a forest of stumps & stems of Coniferous trees, some 12 feet in Circ.e on the sea level, in the Coal beds of Lake Macquarie; at least 500! (hole in page) in one spot!".    

Clarke was no doubt quite keen to tell Macleay about the fossil forest that he thought was so like the Isle of Portland one because it seemed to him to support his views in the ongoing debates he had been having with Macleay on various things - the age of the Sydney Basin coal and interpretation of the Bible in geological terms.   Macleay had formed the view that Clarke's preferred dating of the coal measures as Oolitic (Jurassic) was likely erroneous and Macleay thought the coal was likely older.   Macleay also differed from Clarke on Biblical interpretation of geology.   Clarke is known to have written some forty or fifty pages on something like 'Scriptural Geology' but such has not survived.  As early as 1836 he did published a sermon entitled Geology in reference to Natural Theology.   Macleay's correspondence with Clarke has many relevant mentions of such:  "Our Grand Business is the Search after Geological Truth" but Macleay concluded on all this that "I cannot consider the Bible as a Scientific book according to the vulgar meaning of the word Scientific ....".  

The Clarke/Macleay correspondence reminds us of the 'battle' which was to develop between what would become known as orthodox geology/evolution and creationism/neo-creationism (intelligent design), and which still rages unabated in some quarters (such as in Texas and the southern USA 'Bible Belt').

It seems that Clarke and Macleay managed to still remain good friends in spite of the adversarial nature of some the the views the two men held.   Just as today, such debate or differences of opinion/interpretation flowed back-and-forth:  From what Clarke wrote to Macleay, he (Clarke) considered that the early great coal-forming forests were perhaps 'provided' wisely (by the Creator) in order to convert carbon dioxide to oxygen to prepare for the creation of animals ('evolution' had not then been 'invented' so the thought was of punctuated creation).  Thus, thought Clarke, Moses in Gen. 1.10.11 wrote that vegetation proceeded even the appearance of the Sun and the creation of the water-creatures.   Macleay was having none of that and replied to Clarke that "I doubt (nay I will go further) I do not believe that vegetation preceded the appearance of the Sun and of every kind of Aquatic Animal", for which Macleay stated he must "put faith in the geological evidence".  Macleay wrote that "before terrestrial vegetation Fishes and trilobites lived in possession of eyes having a structure such as to show us that they were formed to meet the light ..." (Branagan and Vallance op. cit.). 

Macleay was very respectful to Clarke.  Although the men were probably in strong debate, Macleay suggested that they should not be like two "rustic bruisers", nor be "roaring out like MacBeth", but rather like "two peaceable warriors on a melodramatic stage let us be content with eliciting a few sparks of light from the collision of our respective weapons".   Not wishing to imply that he could think Moses capable of having written anything inconsistent with the truth, Macleay struggled with possible errors in how the Bible might have been translated etc.  He added that "If therefore you as a Hebrew scholar tell me that my interpretation of the Mosaic Cosmogony is not borne out by the original, however it may square with the translation, I shall not much care, as on this head at least my Conscience is void of offence. I say this however with all the respect which is due to such a subject and to the profession of the person I am addressing."

As this debate was carried on prior to the ascent of evolutionary theory, some other grand mechanism was needed for interpretation of the then-rapidly unfolding geological record of changing life through time.   This mechanism was the supposed manner of the evolution of the atmosphere.  In this the consideration of forests (now mostly coal, but occasionally silicified instead as at Fennell Bay) loomed large.   Macleay, who described himself as just "a dabbler in the Science" (of geology), i.e. not a professed expert like Clarke was, sent to Rev. Clarke his own 'crude notions' about the geological past.  These were, he wrote, that when the "Earth first became habitable to Organised beings it would appear according to geological experience that the Plants and Animals were aquatic and of the lower organizations".  Land plants and animals came later on.   Portions of the land "appear in process of time to have become covered by a dense vegetation so dark and vicious that in these days we can form no idea of it except by viewing the enormous thickness of certain Coal beds".   As was known to Macleay, various geologists at that time had been postulating that the atmosphere of that early epoch was 'charged with an extraordinary dose of Carbonic acid gas which made the vegetation flourish while it prevented terrestrial animals from existing'.   Thus Macleay considered that probably the high CO₂ content rendered the existence of birds and mammalia impossible: "A Reptile and more particularly a toad or any other batrachian might endure such a state of the air" but nothing higher than that in the scale of land animals.   Clarke probably held not dissimilar views, but also saw some divine purpose and wisdom in the arrival of this 'vegetation so dark and vicious' - to convert the carbon dioxide to oxygen and prepare the way for the creation of land animals, and finally Man.  Perhaps relevant but not yet sighted on this topic is "Effects of Forest Vegetation on Climate, by the Rev. W. B. Clarke, M.A., F.R.S., &c, &c. Sydney, 1876. 8vo. Pamph. pp. 57", which apparently also advocates the value of forests in conserving moisture in the soil and describes the disastrous results arising from indiscriminate destruction of forests with numerous quotations.

Re coal and controversy generally, also see Michael Oran's  "Clarke, Coal and Controversy: the traumas of Reverend W.B. Clarke in his defence of Australian geology during the nineteenth century" -  http://ro.uow.edu.au/asdpapers/33 .   This also includes a summary of is a summary of that given in Tom Vallance's 1981 paper "The Fuss about Coal".  

Debate on the role of CO₂ continues today in what is possibly the greatest debate and geo-controversy of all time, the climate change debate.   Early geologists saw CO₂ as not sent from God (like the forests perhaps were to 'fight' or convert CO₂) but rather something cognate or innate to the Earth, as being from volcanoes and other 'natural' sources.   The early reverend-geologists, who worked for/in earth science but at the same time were paid/supported by the faith, were many and varied; and Australia's own 'Father of geology' Rev. Clarke is one.  They naturally would have tended to see things at least slightly differently to various other scientists, as the Clarke/Macleay correspondence transcribed and well analysed by Branagan and Vallance confirms.   The debate today, which of course also includes morality - notions of what is good and what is bad or evil - has moved on.   It now rages over is CO₂ the "good gas" or the "bad gas"?   One side says it is the bad gas, the vehicle of humankind destroying the world, and has to be captured from all coal-burning installations and deeply buried back inside the Earth.   The opposing side says that CO₂ is not the bad gas but rather the greatest and sublime  "good gas", and that whatever you do just don't diminish CO₂ - as some maintain it might be the only thing saving humankind from accelerated planetary cooling.   As for morality/ethics, is humankind sinning against nature and the Earth?  Is it time for the great lizard to return and punish men once more (Aboriginal mythology terms)?   Or time for the Rapture of the righteous prior to Armageddon (Biblical terms)?

As in the days of the Clarke/Macleay debate geologists today can be found on both sides of the present debating about about forests, CO₂ and climate change.   These include famous and well-known Australian geologists like Tim Flannery and Professor Ian Plimer.   Tim Flannery is a palaeontologist and global warming activist who for his work was named  Australian of the Year in 2007 and is presently a professor at Macquarie University in Sydney.  He has gone so far as to recommend shutting down coal-fired power stations, and is the chairman of the Copenhagen Climate Council international climate change awareness group.   Flannery in 1994 published The Future Eaters: An Ecological History of the Australasian Lands and People.  This  best selling book covers the impact of humans on the natural environment.  Flannery in his writings considers that when the Europeans came to Australia they not only introduced unsustainable agricultural practices but lead to the inevitable intensification of bushfires by ending the practice of firestick burning practices of the Aborigines.  Even more controversially, Flannery saw Australia's best sustainable population as around 6 million, which is less than a third of the current level.  This lead to far right accusations of Flannery being a genocide agent of those behind the "New World Order" ( a long-running far right global conspiracy theory).   Aslo controversially, Flannery rather fancifully also suggested that for restoration of a more original Australian environment the Komodo dragon might be brought into Australia as a replacement for its extinct relative, Megalania.  In a later publication ( The Weather Makers: The History & Future Impact of Climate Change) Flannery has outlined the science behind climate change as he sees it.    Totally opposing Flannery's climate change views is an equally well qualified geologist Prof. Ian Plimer.   Ian Plimer is Professor of Mining Geology at The University of Adelaide and Emeritus Professor of Earth Sciences at The University of Melbourne where he was Professor and Head (1991-2005). He was previously Professor and Head of Geology at The University of Newcastle (1985-1991).  He, interestingly enough, is also the 2004 recipient of the Clarke Medal which is named after Rev. Clarke and is awarded by the Royal Society of New South Wales for distinguished work in the natural sciences.   Ian Plimer, who is equally forthright in his views as Tim Flannery,  has been widely heard on Australian radio and elsewhere saying much the same as various other strong critics of global warming - things like that it is the biggest hoax in all of recorded history, the product of 'Green religion', and suchlike.   He claims that the theory of human-induced global warming is highly fraudulent, and that the current alarmism on climate change is not science.   These views he too is currently consolidating into book form.  This book "HEAVEN AND EARTH - Global Warming: The Missing Science" will be over 500 pages and is expected to appear in April 2009.   The advance advertising for Plimer's book states: "The Earth is an evolving dynamic system. Current changes in climate, sea level and ice are within variability. Atmospheric CO₂  is the lowest for 500 million years. Climate has always been driven by the Sun, the Earth’s orbit and plate tectonics and the oceans, atmosphere and life respond. Humans have made their mark on the planet, thrived in warm times and struggled in cool times.   The hypothesis that humans can actually change climate is unsupported by evidence from geology, archaeology, history and astronomy. The hypothesis is rejected.  A new ignorance fills the yawning spiritual gap in Western society. Climate change politics is religious fundamentalism masquerading as science. Its triumph is computer models unrelated to observations in nature. There has been no critical due diligence of the science of climate change, dogma dominates, sceptics are pilloried and 17th Century thinking promotes prophets of doom, guilt and penance.  When plate tectonics ceases and the world runs out of new rocks, there will be a tipping point and irreversible climate change. Don’t wait up."

Not only in Clarke/Macleay pre-Darwinian days and also regarding current climate is  CO₂  central in thought, but also still in palaeoenviromental  considerations for some geologists, especially Greg Retallack.   Retallack (1999) published his ideas of a postapocalyptic greenhouse paleoclimate revealed by the earliest Triassic paleosols in the Sydney Basin.   The Permian-Triassic boundary in the Sydney Basin of Australia is coincident with a pronounced decrease in ¹³C isotopic values of organic carbon, the last coals anywhere in the world for the Early Triassic, and extirpation of the Glossopteris flora.  He envisaged that coal-bearing paleosols of the latest Permian represent extensive swamplands of the seasonally deciduous Glossopteris flora in a humid cold temperate lowland southwest of an Andean-style volcanic arc.  The stone-rolls which are found within some of the uppermost coals Retallack suggests may represent string bogs of the kind now found in cold climates at latitudes of 68°–70° (compatible with the paleomagnetically estimated paleolatitude of 65°–85°S for the Sydney Basin).   The paleolatitude was little changed for earliest Triassic time, but Retallack interprets some paleosols there as inceptisols and entisols that show substantial chemical and textural weathering more like soils now forming at latitudes of 40°–58°.   He therefore infers that an anomalous high-latitude warming struck the area around the time of the Permian-Triassic boundary. Sedimentation rates increased at the boundary marked by geochemically unusual acidification of clay and a dramatic carbon isotopic excursion. These changes in environments and ecosystems can be explained by soil erosion following deforestation implied by the plant extinctions and abundant fungal remains found about the boundary. Retallack concluded in 1999 that evidence from paleosols could added to that from paleontological and isotopic studies to showing disruption of the carbon cycle at the Permian-Triassic boundary, resulting in a CO₂ or CH₄ post-apocalyptic greenhouse climate.

Clarke is buried at the former St. Thomas’ Cemetery, West Street, Crows Nest  (Source:  North Sydney Council).

 

   

The Reverend William Branwhite Clarke (1798-1878)  - "Father of Australian Geology" - late in life, undated.

(Photo: J. Hubert Newman; repository NLNSW - PXA 1023 No. 56; Lithograph from the Sydney Mail)

 

In 1832 Clarke married Maria Stather and in 1833 he was offered the curate position at a new church

in Dorset - St. Mary Longfleet.  It was here that first child, Mordaunt William Shipley Clarke was born,

and maybe where he learned of the Dorset fossil forest at "Isle of Portland" - which he later declared 

Fennell Bay fossil forest to be analogous with.  The Clarkes sailed to Australia in 1839 but were to

meet only with relative poverty as the nation fell into the grip of economic depression in the 1840s.

He wrote home to his mother that "the whole colony is in a state of distress and I see no end to the

pecuniary troubles that have come upon us.  There is scarcely one man in a thousand who can

pay his way, even public men are unpaid .. we are all nearly ruined .."’

 

 

 

William Sharp Macleay (1792-1865) who 'crossed weapons' with Rev. Clarke on the latters Jurassic (Oolitic) age

of the Sydney Basin coal and who expressed disbelief that "vegetation preceded the appearance of

the Sun and of every kind of Aquatic Animal".  William emigrated to Australia in 1839, living at his

father's Elizabeth Bay House which he inherited it in 1848.

The Anglican clergyman and geologist, Rev. Clarke was the Principal at the King’s School in  Parramatta and later the rector at St Thomas’, North Sydney. His passion was geology and as much as possible he combined his clerical duties with many geologising excursions.   His early exertions earned him the popular title of Father of Australian Geology.   Although others had recognised gold in the colony and were even exploiting it on a small scale, notably the shepherd MacGregor near Wellington, Clarke also believed he played a significant role in recognition of the NSW gold potential, which the authorities somewhat overlooked or downplayed (even wished to suppres at first?) ---- For in 1841, while exploring the Blue Mountains and looking for fossils, Clarke proceeded to just west of the mountains and examined granite near Hartley, thereupon discovering particles of gold.   It was the following year, in 1842, that Clarke visited Fennell Bay and was amazed by the fossil forest exposed there.  It inspired him to write and send back to England what is possibly Australia's first learned geological paper.  This was arranged to be communicated verbally to the Geological Society in London, although the full contents of the paper did not get published until 1892.   Although Clarke visited the fossil forest in 1842 he was not the discoverer of it.   It was earlier known to the local missionary clergyman the Reverend Lancelot Threlkeld, whose first mention of it in print was in 1834.

How well Clarke knew Threlkeld is still being learned about.  Clarke was prompted to go to Lake Macquarie in 1842 after he received a box of specimens from Threlkeld.   Under heading "Lightning Conductors", in the Sydney Morning Herald of 18 December 1845, a letter to the editor, signed and dated 'W.B.C. December 16" is a rReply to a letter on the 15th from 'L.E.T.' [Rev. Lancelot Threlkeld].  Threlkeld has an interest in that subject as his mission at Ebenezeer has been strongly struck once with lightning, the strike splitting a long pole at his windmill in 1837.

 

THE AREA 

Fennel Bay in Flash Earth - http://www.flashearth.com/?lat=-32.995513&lon=151.596712&z=16.5&r=0&src=msl

 

Google Earth view (2007, imagery pre-2007) over Fassifern - Fennell Bay is the water body seen to

the lower right.  Open cut mining operations are seen not far distant to the NW, and the creek that

drains from the mining area to the bay, with a small subaqueous delta at its mouth, is "LT Creek"

named after the Reverend L.T. Threlkeld who first noted  here in the 1830s "almost a forest

of petrifications of wood, of various sizes, extremely well defined".

Fennell Bay aerial photo 1940, looking south across bridge to prograding delta

which has almost divided the bay.

 

Clarke's 1842 manuscript map of the area.   This is a Map of Lake Macquarie as was annotated by W.B. Clarke, probably in 1842 when he is known to have done field work there.   It is presumably in the Clarke papers and a copy of it is in Branagan and Vallance (2008).    Note "Tree Fossil Beds" annotated along the  western shore of Coal Point and "Fossil Trees" marked at northern shore of Fennell Bay.  Note that Clarke has here named what is now called Coal Point as 'Tir a-bé-en-ba'.

He possibly got these Aboriginal names from L.E. Threlkeld's "An Australian Grammar" (Threlkeld

1834) where there is a list of place names including "Ti-ra-bé-en-ba .... A long point of land tooth like; from Ti-ra, a tooth".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inset box of same map.   Clarke had annotated various Aboriginal place names, including "Kurrikurran".

 

 

Some words in the margin of the same map.   The note mainly referred to the totally altered condition of the sandy entrance

to Lake Macquarie, but the two or three first words before "of April 1842" remain uninterpretable.

 

 

 

Comparison with the same area today.   The name 'Fishing Point' is applied to a different place

and the 1842 "Broughton's Point" is now Bolton Point.

Fennell Bay map.  Note the LT creek which runs from the middle of the north shore of the bay northwesterly towards Fassifern Railway station,   The dashed line is the position of the base of the Great Northern Seam.  This runs along the western shore of Fennell Bay and the position of the South Pacific Colliery adit is shown there.  Three other entrances to the seam are shown NE of Fennell Bay Public School ("Fennell Bay Workings").  The oblique line hatching is  the boundary of Pacific Colliery holding.   (Source: Plan DMR 26921.  Drawn 1959 to accompany a report on the Teralba district by C.T. McElroy and M.B. Coleman).   The South Pacific Adit may be in the vicinity of Aldon Crescent just south of where it joins Narara Street (?).

 

 

Joint Coal Board South Pacific Colliery percussion drill hole 1.   Commenced 70 ft above sea level (where the fossil forest is.

Downhole around sea level would be in the lower third of the 34 ft thick thick 'chert' interval which lies close below the

15 ft thick coal seam.   The position of the forest horizon towards the base of the 'chert' unit is consistent with

the 'chert' being an ashfall (Awaba tuff) that entombed the forest.

 

 

A little west of Fennell Bay the land rise and appears to be stoney in places, from aerial view.   This may be the

sort of  place where "P. Bore No. 2" was sunk (?), perhaps on the ridge crest at the end of Todd Street (?).

 

Although the colliery just west of Fennel Bay was later known as South Pacific, a map in Jones (1926) shows the colliery holding directly west of Fennel Bay as the South Teralba colliery, and that immediately to the northwest as the Northumberland colliery.   The South Pacific colliery employed 35 men in 1926.

From geochemical correlations, the Awaba Tuff has been correlated with the Burragorang Claystone to the south and the Nalleen Tuff to the north ( Kramer et al. 2001, Grevenitz et al. 2003).   The Awaba Tuff is only one of very many tuff units in the coal measures, but it is one of the better known ones as it has sometimes given difficult coal mining conditions.  Petrographic data for the coal measures tuffs in the southern Sydney Basin suggest they were deposited by airfall mechanisms.  They consist mainly of kaolinite and mixed-layer illite/smectite clays, quartz phenocryst fragments, plagioclase crystal fragments, lithic fragments and secondary calcite and siderite. Zr/TiO₂ and Nb/Y ratios, tectonic discrimination diagrams and chondrite normalised REE patterns (La/Yb=3.3 to 11.9) are consistent over a wide area and suggest a dominant source magma that was calc-alkaline,  rhyodacitic-rhyolitic (Grevenitz et al. 2003).  The volcaniclastic material in the coal measures, especially the Newcastle Coal Measures, has long been thought to have been  sourced from volcanoes to the north or east (Wabrooke 1987).   It may have derived mainly from a continental/volcanic-arc tectonic setting further east than the present coastline (Grevenitz et al. 2003).   The source of the tuffs may be interpreted to be an active volcanic arc to the east of the present coastline, the postulated Currarong Orogen (Evans and Migliucci, 1991).

In Clarke's paper he illustrated a standing tree stump at water's edge west of Ebenezer coal works.   The coal works tunnel is thought to have been near the tip of the present Coal Point.   It is likely to still be there, although this writer has not looked for it.   It would have been entering the Fassifern Seam, the shoreline cliff outcrop of which would have been obvious.   If there is good exposure/access here then this section of shoreline might be a good place for examining the sequence from the level of the fossil forrest floor down to the underlying coal seam.

Threlkeld began to open up this seam to generate income for his mission after the Government gave him notice that it would cease to support him (as the Aboriginal presence in the area had faded away).

The end seemed nigh for the mission at 17 May 1841.  The Colonial Secretary writes to Threlkeld that he will be discontinued, and also not let move to Newcastle and be retained as a supported clergyman  there, as he had suggest might happen.   "I am directed by Sir George Gipps [the Governor' to inform you, that having had under consideration the annual reports made by you during the last few years and especially the report for the year 1840, it appears to His Excellency that no further advantage is likely to accrue to the Aborigines from your continued residence at Lake Macquarie; and that the Governor cannot accede to the proposal made by you, that you should remove to Newcastle, and still continue to receive a salary from Government.  His Excellency is reluctantly forced to acquaint you, that the engagement entered into with you by the Government in the year 1831 will be considered at an end, with the expiration of the  present year.   I have the honour to be ... (paper torn/lost).

 

With the writing on the wall, or copied into his journal, Threlkeld also added to the journal his note of how he would now look to COAL for financial salvation, with the expected help of the Lord.

 

 

Reply from the Colonial Secretary stating the termination of the Mission in December next - It has pleased God to open under 

my feet supplies in the Coal means to support my family so that when the Ravens fled he has graciously provided other

sustenance for us which I thus acknowledge and trust for grace so to use it as not to abuse this mercy of the Lord.

 my difficulties to act the work  a (sic - are?) going (?should be 'to be' but he wrote wrong tense 'are') great

but I trust the Lord will provide.

 

Threlkeld's curious mention that Ravens had fled may have been a Biblical influence on his mind.   In the Bible  "ravens fed the prophet Elijah every morning and evening after he had fled from Ahab into the wilderness (1 Kings 17:4) .   This would connect with Threlfeld's oft repeated faith in divine Providence.   Moreover in another sense he may have reversed the idea, making himself and his family now the "Ravens" who had been forced leave Ebenezer on the Lake (for at some time he must have removed his family to Sydney).   This interpretation is supported by the extended form of the same idea that occurs in his final report on the Mission, which states "Believing that the divine purpose of God in establishing Governments is that the Government of every nation should have a parental regard to the welfare and interests of its subjects, is the apology for minutely stating past events, and my future prospects respecting employment and provision. As a minister with liberty of Conscience, I trust to be ready to every good work; but, with respect to provision for myself and family, the ravens are fled from the wilderness - the brook has dried up with the stream; no widow is commanded to sustain in the city; yet beneath our very feet there is now just opened a coal mine, which, with the blessing of God, will sustain us in our duties through life."  (Copy as in the Journal; published version might be very slightly different - It was published in the Herald on 5 May 1841).

 

The above interpretation of the "Ravens" being fled, that it somehow relates to the Bible, is just a guess and might be barking up the wrong tree entirely.  A curious ?coincidence is that we know so much that might otherwise have been lost due to a Raven trying to fly back in time and look everywhere possible - that Raven was the great grand daughter, Mrs Marjorie Raven, who organised for the Journal to be scanned to digital form at Mitchell Library, and who later pursued every avenue of search when the original went missing.

 

After first suspecting that the "Ravens" are some sort of Biblical allusion, this writer subsequently found another similar mention, 

in a letter written to His Honor, Judge Burton, on 8th February 1839 from Threlkeld at Lake Macquarie.  In this he states inter alia  "God has placed me here, fed as it were by Ravens, who croak, at the bread and flesh bestowed morning and evening, and hardly that, and my duty is to wait his Providence, although my encumbrances, increase year after year through further paucity of my allowance from government."

 

The mission journal records that a shaft was sunk and tunnel driven to the shore for wheeling out coal to place in on a barge to take to Reid's Mistake heads by August that year.   On Monday 24 August 1841 the tunnel began to deliver its first coal for transport.  The seam, he wrote, was five feet thick and he would be sending the coal to Sydney.   Threlkeld was very enterprising in his endeavours but what profit his mine made overall in the end, if any, is not know.    It proved inadequate to save his situation and in the end he lost the lot.   Threlkeld was indebted to a Mr Ebenezer Bourne who held mortage over it.   When Threlkeld was half a year in arrears on interest payments, in 1844, Bourne advertised in the Herald, threatening to sell the property.   Threlkeld tried to obtain a further mortage to try and buy the matter back out of Bourne's hands, debt upon debt perhaps.   The same year Threlkeld claimed to have found that his business manager, Mr Moody Osmund, had been defrauding him in various ways and engaging in forgery, etc.  Moody was a relative of a fellow missionary and friend, and presumably out of consideration of this Threlkeld indicated he would not press matters, else (he thought) Moody would surely for his crimes undergo transportation (to Norfolk Island?).   In August 1844 Threlkeld recorded his asserts were all in trust to two more Sydney men (a merchant and a banker), in addition to Robert Bourne, for raising money on  the collateral of his extensive Lake Macquarie land grant, in order to liquidate the claims of all creditors and maybe have money for running the coal mine.   On his birthday later that year he wrote in the Journal as follows:

 

 

 (20 October 1844)   I am this day fifty six years old and it has pleased the Lord to bring me through much tribulation during the

past years especially in my pecuniary affairs and yet we have much cause of gratitude to God for supporting us through

much perplexity and distress.  My trust in his word who has said I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.  Whether we

shall be able to carry on the business which now is in trust remains with the Providence of God.  If the report

of a upper mine discovered on Ebenezer Estate is correct it will be another instance of God's goodness

and deliverance.

 

The upper seam referred to is the Great Northern Seam, but it did not save the mine.

 

In fact the upper seam had probably been discovered as early as 1841, but at that time it might not have been realised that it was a different seam.

 

The Ebenezer coal works was reported in the The Colonial Observer, Thursday November 25, 1841, as follows:

 

""""

It is one of the most indispensable duties of the Press, especially in a country, like ours comparatively new, to take every opportunity to direct the attention of the public to its unemployed productive resources. Under this impression we shall adopt every means to obtain information on such subjects, and communicate that information for the public advantage. In the present article we intend to submit to our readers such particulars as we have been able to obtain relative to the workable coal seam lately discovered by the Rev. Mr. Threlkeld, and to the progress of the operations entered on for the purpose of rendering the coal available to the public service. We have been kindly furnished with the following information:

The Ebenezer coal works originated in the following manner: A seam of apparently cannel coal broke out at the water's edge, running into the salt water lake, and has been known to exist for some years. The A. A. company advertised that no coal could be supplied for exportation. Several gentlemen proposed plans to obtain coal in different parts of the colony, but it so happened that restrictions in the working of coal prevented mines being opened in different situations, whilst the grant at Lake Macquarie, named Ebenezer, was, providentially for the grantee, given before the restrictions took place. On digging the cropping out coal to ascertain the depth of the seam, it was found to be nearly five feet thick, and after raising a number of tons which were sent off immediately to Sydney to convince parties of the existence of coal, it was found to terminate in a fault or throw down. (It appears rather to be what is technically called by the British miners a saddle back - Ed).

It was thus necessary to sink a shaft some little distance on a hill, and it was supposed that at twenty five yards the seam would be found, but at twelve and a half yards depth the miners came to a fine seam of coal five feet thick, with a good roof and sort of sand stone floor. It was then deemed most advantageous to run out a tunnel to the water's edge, which was effected, and after laying down a railway, the miners commenced and delivered the coals at the mouth of the tunnel to the barges which lay alongside in seven feet water. The first sample of coals proved prejudicial to the concern, in consequence of being surface coal and necessarily of an inferior quality to the main seam, the coal from which is now making its way rapidly amongst the families in Sydney As respects its quality for steam engines, it is found to be much improved, and one engineer who has tried it gives his decided opinion that it will ultimately prove excellent coal for the steamers; but, like all new comers, it has to encounter prejudices, which a little time will no doubt remove. It was feared that the seam was only a small vein running across the peninsular part of the grant, but on running a tunnel some few yards under the hills, about two miles distant inland, from the shaft the seam was entered and appears of a bright and excellent quality. The principal obstacle to be overcome is the trans shipment of the coal in barges to vessels lying at anchor in 6 or 7 fathom water outside the bar entrance to the lake, to avoid which, if sufficient encouragement is given to the sale of coal, vessels of a peculiar construction might be built, to bring up the coal direct to Sydney, and thus ensure a constant supply at a steady price for the consumers here. The works can be extended to bring out any amount by only increasing the number of miners, the local situation being such as to afford the greatest facility at a small expence without the aid of expensive machinery - an advantage in which the public partakes by the coals being delivered at two shillings per ton under the present Newcastle price. 

""""

Besides his known works at Coal Point, the above shows that Threlkeld also found coal at some second place a further two mines inland.  He may at first thought it the same coal, but sinking a shaft further inland should first have come upon the Great Northern Seam.]

 

It is not known how much coal Threlkeld ever sent to Sydney or if any coal was ever produced from the upper seam.  He is understood to have utilised the following vessels:

 

Schooner,	LANCELOT		about 50 tons
Schooner,	SARAH	about 50 tons
Barge	HOPE	about 30 tons
Schooner,	HENRY	16 tons
Boat,	TIGER	10 tons
Boat	CALCUTTA			10 tons

 

The mining was run by an overseer and after 1841 Threlkeld and his family had moved to Sydney where where he was engaged at the Watson's Bay Congregational Church.

Threlkeld's affairs did not improve.  Being placed in Trust would be similar to a business now being placed "in administration" - he was liquidated!   As he recorded on 5 January 1845:

 

 

By some analyses it was The financial failure during the depression of the 1840s of his eldest son, Joseph Thomas, together with friends and relatives (including Thomas Arndell Jnr.) which finally obliged Threlkeld to sell the Ebenezer Coal Estate.  The SYDNEY MORNING HERALD of 19 December, 1844, estimated its value at 34,416 pounds thirteen shillings and four pence.  It was sold by the Trustees at auction to the mortgagee in December, 1844.  The sale included "the farms on which improvements had been made in buildings etc., to the amount of 1,132 pounds together with five acres of land at the Heads of the Lake, implements of husbandry, carpenters', smiths' an shipwrights' tools, farm horses, cows and bullocks. Also, three horses two drays, one cart, one gig, etc., in Sydney; likewise, two schooners fifty tons each, one schooner sixteen tons, one barge thirty tons, two ten ton boats, besides other articles,all in one lump sum of 3,450 pounds."

 

That point presumably marks the end of Threlkeld's connection with any mineral resources thinking (he had also been interested in signs of iron ore and thoughts of using coal to reduce iron ore to iron), or use of shells for lime, or geology interests at Lake Macquarie.

 

Another summary version of events states:

 

A grant of 1280 acres (Awaba Parish) had been given to Threlkeld, as was promised in 1829.  This included all of present day Toronto and Coal Point.  It passed from him at the abovementioned 'Sale of auction' on 30 December 1844.   The buyer was  Ralph Mayer Robey, who received the Deeds to it on 28 February 1846.   By 1851 Robey had leased the area to Richard Fennell.  The mine continued to be worked, under lease by Henry R. Whittell and later on more directly by R.M. Robey.   It was worked, as "South Hetton Colliery" as late as 1906.

 

The Henry R. Whittell referred to here was Henry Rawles Whittell.    Little has been found on him, or on the South Hetton Company which last of all worked the mine.   [Main source:  "The Ebenezer coal works", The Newcastle and Hunter District Historical Society Monthly Journal July 1949.]

 

 

The (original) South Hetton colliery was in England, 11 km ENE of Durham, and is now the Durham Mining Museum.  Commenced in 1833, it worked a seam (Hetton or Wallsend seam) that was six feet four inches thick.   Threlkeld's mine had a seam six foot six

inches thick so there was some similarity, but exactly why the name South Hetton was applied to this mine is not yet known.

 

Unfortunately the perusal of Threlkeld's writings, in his Journal of the Mission, finds no mention of Rev.  Clarke.    If one only had the Threlfkeld mission records to go on it might seem as though Threlkeld and Clarke were never in contact.   But Threlkeld being interested in coal would have naturally have looked to Clarke for advice on such things - as the best known geologist in the colony.   And from Clarke's end it is known that he was spurred to visit Lake Macquarie by getting a box of specimens sent to him from there by Threlkeld. It is inconceivable that Clarke would not have wanted to call on Threlkeld when he (Clarke) visited the Lake, but Threlkeld by then might no longer have been in residence there.   Interesting things 'found' by Clarke are at sites otherwise known to have been known to Threlkeld, the fossil forest, the coal works vicinity at Coal Point, and at Reid's Mistake.   If he did not learn of these places directly from Threlkeld then perhaps he was assisted to visit or know about them by some manager or caretaker who was an agent of Threlkeld's interests there(?).   More on this, and who discovered the Great Northern Seam, should likely turn up elsewhere.   The explorer Ludwig Leichhardt is also known to have visited the coal mine in 1842, the same year as Rev. Clarke visited.  He too is not mentioned in the Mission Journal, which likewise suggests the Journal was not being written on site that year.   The year 1841 was effectively the last year of the mission and what arrangements Threlkeld had for running the mine in his absence are little known of.

 

HISTORICAL SUMMARY OF THE FENNEL BAY SITE  (A CHRONOLOGY)

The history of the site is being researched starting off with the following known chronology.

This is an outline of information relating to the various scientific researches on the "fossil pine forest" that was first referred to in print within the Reverend Lancelot Threlkeld’s book on the grammar of the Lake Macquarie Aborigines, published in Sydney in 1834.

The scientific aspects of the site were then addressed by the geologist the Reverend W.B. Clarke, who visited the area in 1842 and prepared a detailed illustrated report which was presented to the Geological Society of London the following year.  It was not published in full, however, until 1892.  It was published by the NSW Department of Mines who inherited Clarke's scientific papers - although much of the results of Clarke's work is also known to have perished in the Garden Palace fire. 

The earliest observers were likely highly impressed by the Fennell Bay fossil forest.  Clarke clearly found it a wondrous and mystical place that set him thinking: "The train of thought which is excited by this scene is highly curious, and in few places in the world can the quiet and daily processes of natural growth and decay, the forms of living and dead things, and the successive changes and reproductions of matter, owing to the operations of most powerful though secretly evolving causes, be so prominently displayed, as in this singular picture of the past and the present.  But even then, human-induced degradation of the palaeo-forest scence may have been underway.  Clarke believed that somebody (or some " modern cause") had been breaking some of the trees down.  He wondered if they had been broken by " blows they have received from the Blacks".   It seems likely that breaking of the trees continued, perhaps with pieces collected more for garden ornamentation than by fossil enthusiasts.  Whatever happened it would seem that the place was far less impressive in under a hundred years when Jones (1931) wrote of it.  By that time, whatever Jones saw there it did not impress him as a fossil forest and he mostly seems to have observed fragmented trunk sections.  His report notes that "a number" of silicified trees were showing in the bay but gives no feel for how many.   He noted that silicified wood fragments occurred in association with other seams and his report gives no indication if he was aware or not that others had previously regarded the Fennell Bay exposure as a fossil forest.  His own impression, that silicified wood was embedded in the chert at all angles, presumably would not have inclined him to have viewed it as a forest preserved in situ.  

 

The Chronology

1833 - Precursor to Australian events.   Clarke married Maria Moreton (nee Stather) on 13 January 1832, and the couple were eventuallyto have two children - Mary and Mordaunt. In 1833 he was installed as first incumbent at Saint Mary Longfleet, Poole, Dorset, and the family were housed at the nearby residence known as Stanley Green. The Clarke's remained there until their departure for Australia six years later.

Portland Island, lower left, is where Rev. Clarke knew of a fossil forest he would later compare Fennell Bay with.   Here occurs

the most important raised beach on the south coast of England, at Portland Bill.  The geology is famous and would almost 

certainly have been visited by Rev. Clarke.

Fossil tree figured in Transactions of the Geological Society, vol. 4, part 2, p. 221.   Found in Dungeness Quarry on the Isle of Portland.

Measured and drawn by Mr. Soweby and taken to London for sale.   Now in Dorcester Museum.   (Photo:  Ian West)

Isle of Portland.   Two large quarries seen at upper centre.  Good sections through the lower half of the Purbeck Beds occur, with silicified fossil trees forming the well-known "fossil forest".  Some tree stumps are found in situ in fossil soil beds. 

A silicified tree propped up on display at Portland Isle..  (Ian and Tonya West).

[REF: http://www.soton.ac.uk/~imw/Portland-Isle-Geological-Introduction.htm ]

 

1834 - L.E. Threlkeld, An Australian Grammar: comprehending the principles and natural rules of the language, as spoken by the Aborigines in the vicinity of Hunter’s River, Lake Macquarie, &c., New South Wales, Stephens & Stokes, Sydney, 1834, 131p. Reprinted in Threlkeld (1892). The following information regarding the fossil pine forest is contained therein on page 51: "Kurra-kurran, the name of a place in which there is almost a forest of petrifications of wood, of various sizes, extremely well defined. It is in a bay at the north-western extremity of Lake Macquarie. The tradition of the aborigines is, that formerly it was one large rock which fell from the heavens and killed a number of blacks who were assembled there; they had gathered themselves together in that spot by command of an immense iguana, which came down from heaven for that purpose; the iguana was angry at their having killed lice by roasting them in the fire; those who had killed the vermin by cracking them, had been previously speared to death by him with a long reed from Heaven! At that remote period, the moon was a man named Pontobug; and hence the moon is called he to the present day; but the sun, being formerly a woman, retains the feminine pronoun she. When the iguana saw all the men were killed by the fall of the stone, he ascended up into Heaven, where he is supposed to be now."

 

There seems no doubt the giant goanna and humans co-oexisted.  And it seems likely

the big lizard was capable of severely punishing (eating) human.  What seems

doubtful is that memory could persist so long, even culturally.

 

Recommended reading:  "Dragons in the Dust - The Paleobiology of the Giant

Monitor Lizard Megalania" by Ralph E. Molnar, 2004  (ISBN 0253343747).

 

 

"Giant animals of ancient Australia .... We know these animals existed from Aboriginal

stories and legends."  Students with Keren Jarman, Lycee Condorcet, Maroubra. 

Megalania may have actively preyed on Aboriginal Australians.

 

1839-1842 - In January 1839 the Reverend Mr Clarke and his family emigrated to New South Wales.   He took up duties as a minister and also in 1839-40 he for a time the headmaster of King's School, Parramatta.   He acted as a roving parson responsible for the parishes of Castle Hill Dural, then was rector at St Thomas's Church, North Sydney, in 1846.  Early in 1842 Mrs Clarke and the two children left the Colony for England - Maria was homesick and the children needed an English education. They did not return until 1856.

In 1841 he wrote to his old mentor, Professor Sedgwick of Cambridge, stating that he believed the local coal to be ‘oolitic' (Jurassic).    

1842 - The year 1842 was most eventful for Clarke and in the history of Fennell Bay fossil forest appreciation and understanding.   The Sydney Gazette of 22 April 1842 reported on "Lake Macquarie Coals",  namely that a vessel would be in from Newport, Lake Macquarie, in the course of a few days with "Coals from Mr. Threlkeld's".   It was promoted on the matter that "Parties desirous of making trial of them (and they will find them fully equal to the Newcastle Coals) are requested to make early application to Mr. Samuel Miller, Erskine Street (Sydney)."  Reverend Threlkeld had first reported discovery of coal at Lake Macquarie in 1827 (The Australian, 13 June 1827).

Clarke's letters (Branagan and Vallance, 2008) show that by 1 July 1842 he had been in touch with Rev. Threlkeld and had resolved that as soon as he had some spare time he would be off to Lake Macquarie.   That letter also shows that he was aware that "Silicified coniferous plants have been found abundantly in the Portland Oolitic beds.  Almost identical plants, colour characteristic etc agreeing occur not only on the surface in the Hunter District, but in the Illawarra rocks."   In a letter dated 4 July, from Macleay to Clarke Macleay states "You say that the Silicified Coniferous plants of the Hunter River district and Illawarra rocks are almost identical to those of the Portland oolitic beds".  And at midnight 5 July 1842 Clarke ended up some notes he wrote on matters being debated with W.S. Macleay, including Clarke's idea of Sydney Basin coal being of Jurassic age, and mentions silicified wood lying in sandstone above the coal.  By 16 July 1842 Clarke was back from his visit to Lake Macquarie and wrote to Macleay that he was going to tell him more about a fossil forest of at least 500 trees found at Lake Macquarie which he thought was perfectly analogous to the (Jurassic) fossil forest at Isle of Portland in Dorset.  By 29 August 1842 Clarke had finished his paper on the fossil forest and despatched it to travel by ship back to England, along with some large specimens of the silicified trees.  Then very soon after that, by November 1842, Clarke met visiting English geologist J.B. Jukes and went into the field with him.  Jukes considered that the New South Wales coal was as old as, or older than, the Carboniferous coal of England.  Jukes apparently convinced Clarke of the matter (that the coal was much older than Jurassic), as W.S. Macleay had already been trying to do. Macleay in 1842 had suggested that the Sydney sandstone (Hawkesbury Sandstone) may be Triassic.  Clarke clearly first saw the fossil forest some little time before 16 July 1842 but the preserved correspondence from earlier in that month indicates he already has some knowledge of the occurrence of silicified wood above coal.  He may have seen that for himselk and/or been told of it.   As Threlkeld knew of it much earlier, and Clarke determined to visit Lake Macquarie after getting a box of specimens from Threlkeld it seems likely that Trelkeld would have informed Clarke of the fossil forest.   By November 1842 Clarke had spoken with visiting English geologist J.B. Jukes, who considered the New South Wales and Tasmanian coal beds to be as old as, or older than, the Carboniferous coal of England, and Clarke agreed with him.   Clarke was finally persuaded away from his initial view of the Coal Measures age as Jurassic.

1842 (1884) - W.B. Clarke, On a Fossil Pine Forest at Kurrur-Kurran, in the inlet of Awaaba [Lake Macquarie], East Coast of Australia, manuscript notes, signed 'W.B. Clarke. Parramatta, 29th August 1842.' Reprinted in the 1884 Annual Reports of the New South Wales Department of Mines (refer below). Clarke’s report was the first prepared on the geology of the site. It was most like written up in Sydney on this date following a visit to the area earlier that year. Clarke also sent a letter off on this date to Adam Sedgwick, his geological patron at Cambridge University, England. 

The letter reads in part as follow:

" Paramatta 29 August 1842

My dear Sir,

I take the advantage of my friend Mr Arthur Westmacott’s return to Europe to convey to London for me a paper on a fossil forest at a place called Kurrur-Kurran in Port Macquarie. The details of the phenomena there exhibited are in the paper. I have caused it to be directed to you & I shall esteem it a great favor if you will have the kindness to see it put into train for being read on its arrival. Two large specimens of the fossils are to go on the same ship directed to the Society – one of them I presume will be sufficient for them – the other is for your lecture room at Cambridge. There are also some portions of the rock in which they grew. I think you will not be displeased with this my first contribution from Australia…. PSS On second thoughts I have directed the paper to Lonsdale or the Secretaries, the Fossils to you, at the Society’s apartments, & I have told them you are to have the choice of one of the specimens.”

The paper was subsequently read to the Geological Society of London on 22 February 1843 and a substantial abstract published in its Proceedings for 1843 and also the Annals and Magazine of Natural History. The paper first appeared in Sydney during 1845 within The Register, in a rewritten form. The original 1842 paper was eventually published within the 1884 Annual Reports of the New South Wales Department of Mines, accompanied by numerous illustrations. It is reproduced below:

First Geological Investigation

(The below published 1884 text was reconstituted via OCR, and checking, by Michael Organ)

 

On a Fossil Pine forest at Kurrur-kurran, in the inlet of Awaaba, on the Eastern Coast of Australia.

 

The Inlet of Awaaba, or, as it is called, Lake Macquarie, is the largest of the shore lakes or inlets between Port Stephens and Broken Bay. Others occur at intervals along the east coast of New South Wales.

The term lake is generally applied to them from their having a narrow opening seaward which is usually very blocked up by sand.  

Awaaba is situate in the midst of the series of sandstones and conglomerates and lignite beds which supply the Australian coal, extending from the river Hunter along the coast southwards towards Brisbane Water.

Very recently coal works have been opened about 4 feet above the level of the water in Tirabeenbah Mountain, and it is about this level that immediately over and under the lignite occur the beds of fossilized wood.

Awaaba, or Lake Macquarie, consist of a series of bays running up amongst these beds, which being divided by nearly vertical joints afford regular longitudinal and transverse lines of coast. The water of the lake is very deep, and the cliffs are steep at the water's edge. Fine bays running out like fingers pass up the country, a low coast range of tho coal series, shutting out the sea, except at the before-mentioned entrance which may be considered as the wrist of the hand.

The new coal works are at the south end of Tirabeenbah; the part under discussion is at the north end. The general condition of the locality is this: The mountain of Tirabeenbah ends abruptly to the North-west, being cut off by a fault, and forming a lofty though not very abrupt escarpment, where the range turns round towards the west and south-west. A wide valley intervenes between it and the next range on the north-east, and the face of the mountain swells out into a hill of low elevation and abuts upon a bay of inconsiderable size.

 Between the slope and the water occurs a level alluvial flat, about a foot above the lake, composed of black sandy vegetable mould, and detritus thickly interspersed with roots of plants and grasses; the length of this flat cannot be much less than half a mile, and its average breadth is 63 paces or about 50 yards. Trees of large growth, eucalypti and casuarinae, and some smaller shrubs stud this flat at intervals, and even grow close to the water. This flat is called by the Aborigines Kurrar Kurran. The lake here is very shallow, and it would appear as if the alluvial flat extended some distance further under the water. (See Fig. 1.)

 

 

Bounding the river to north-north-east a conical hill rises behind the forest that clothes a long point running out in front, and on the south-west the slopes of Tirabeenbah come down to the water, so that the bay is perfectly land-locked, having an opening only in front of the alluvial flat, and the quiet character of the place and the sombre wood-clad low lines of the coast do not of themselves lead to any idea of great geological interest. The whole is a pretty lake-like picture, whilst on points at the distance of from 80 to 200 feet from the shore numerous water birds, cranes, gulls, and pelicans, are often seen sitting and standing upon what appear at the distance to be points of a reef of rocks just peeping above the water. The black swan also occasionally sails across the bay, giving an idea of natural security to the inhabitants of this otherwise unoccupied and secluded spot. It is there that by far the most curious instance of the freaks of nature which have met my notice in this singular country is seen to occur. Throughout the whole of the flat, and for the distance named in the lake, and perhaps further, stumps and stools of fossilised pines stand out of the ground and water. If the present forest were cut down at a certain level nothing could give a better idea of the effect than this fossil forest presents. The trees are of various sizes, from 2 to 4 feet above the surface of the ground, but one stump in the lake must be at least 4 feet above the water and 5 or 6 feet in diameter.  

The colour of the fossils varies from grayish white to clouded gray within, and sections of them have the identical appearance of slices of modern pine wood, the rings of growth being as distinctly marked and the fibrous transverse matter between seen under the microscope, and even without it, has the glossy appearance of the recent wood. Veins of chalcedony also traverse the fossils between the annular rings and also in the radial lines, in this respect, as in others, affording an instance perfectly analogous to that of the fossil trees of the Isle of Portland. Indeed, after comparison of the Australian with English specimens, I can see no material difference in their fossil structure, and it is evident that the two examples are but distinct proofs of the same kind of phenomenon.

The surfaces of the trees where they have been exposed to the air have acquired a yellowish hue, and lichens have grown over some of them, giving the wavy appearance which living trees now present in the bush.

These trees appear to have been fossilised whilst they were growing, since no process of fracture in the living state could have given such clear and horizontal sections. Moreover, in one or two instances a very large stem has been broken apparently by some recent cause, and two or three fragments all perfectly clear and horizontal in the fracture have fallen off from the stump and lie beside the lower part, whilst occasionally portions have been further removed and lie upon the surface of the alluvium or are entangled in it. The general direction of the fallen portions is from north-east. That this is the result of some modern cause is clear from the fact that the surfaces of the sections are clean, whereas the summit of the stump is overgrown and meteorologically affected. It is possible that some of the fractures may have originated in the blows they have received from the Blacks.

A few of the stumps have a hollow in the middle, but others are firm throughout. In several about the same diameter I counted 60, 70, 80, and 120 concentric rings of growth; and in one case the bark of the tree was about 3 inches thick.

At the distance of 3 feet from the shore I found one standing out of the water with portions of the root imbedded in the rock below; and of those on the flat many had remains of the roots still in the rock under the alluvial matter; and the greater part were all standing erect. Such too is the case with those in the lake, and their situation is marked by the birds before alluded to, which thus sit in the water on trees that once grew upon dry land, but now converted into stone, remain in situ as marine rocks. The modern casuarina is also seen occasionally to grow on the flat out of the spot where the fossil tree appears, and one large modern tree has actually by its roots upset the stool of a fossil tree which lies about the foot of the recent plant as if that had turned it out of its burial ground.

The train of thought which is excited by this scene is highly curious, and in few places in the world can the quiet and daily processes of natural growth and decay, the forms of living and dead things, and the successive changes and reproductions of matter, owing to the operations of most powerful though secretly evolving causes, be so prominently displayed, as in this singular picture of the past and the present.

The rock in which these trees are rooted is a sandstone of a compact and semi-crystalline character, approaching to flint or chert, and undoubtedly of the same level as that which may be noticed under Tirabeenba at the south head of Awaaba and Nobby's Island at the mouth of the Hunter. This case is but a larger expansion of what occurs there; and instead of a few we have here at least 500 trees exhibited in the character of fossils. We cannot doubt that such being the case this is the real geological horizon of that great silicified forest which has furnished the enormous quantities of fragments of similar fossil wood which are spread over the surface and embedded in the sandstones above and under the coal. Tasmania as well as Australia exhibits this abundance, and, so far as I can learn, it is a distinguishing characteristic of Australasia generally. In "The Tasmanian Journal," vol. I, p. 24, is an account of fossil wood from Macquarie Plains, Tasmania, by J. D. Hooker, M.D., assistant surgeon of H.M.S. “Erebus," from which it appears that Tasmania is in this respect in perfect agreement with Australia; and Flinders, writing of the islands in Bass’ Straits, says:- “Some of the trees on Preservation Island had partly undergone a peculiar transformation. The largest of them were not thicker than a man's leg, and the whole were decayed; but whilst the upper branches continued to be of wood the roots of the surface and the trunks up to a certain height were of a stony substance resembling chalk, on breaking these chalky trunks, which was easily done, rings of the brown wood sometimes appeared in them, but in the greater number nothing more than circular traces remained. The situation in which these trees were principally found is a sandy valley, near the middle of the island, which was likewise remarkable for the quantity of bones of birds and small quadrupeds with which it was strewed. The petrifactions were afterwards more particularly examined by Mr. Bass, who adopted the opinion that they had been caused by water." - Flinders' Voy. I, cxxxi.

A partial petrifaction of wood is not altogether unknown in other and more distant countries, and not to allude to Trajan's Bridge (already considered by Dr. Buckland), I may mention the occurrence of such examples in Antigua. I have seen a plant from that island having a stem of natural wood with an attached bulb converted into silica. A specimen of this kind was in the year 1833 in the collection of the late Rev. T. Barkett, Rector of Swanage, in the county of Dorset.

An interest is excited for the Australasian petrifactions by the circumstance of their being generally found associated with igneous rocks. Preservation Island, for instance, is composed of granite and plutonic schists, the latter traversed by granite veins and trap dykes; and Awaaba and its vicinity, especially Nobby's, and the cliffs near Newcastle, are also powerfully affected by intrusive rocks.

 “Keignalan" also, according to Dr. M'Cormick, of the "Erebus" ("Tasmanian Journal," vol. I, p. 279), exhibits the phenomenon of silicified wood in association with, and imbedded in, trap rocks. But to return to Kurrar Kurran, the rock as before observed, as well as the trees is silicified; the conclusion therefore is, that the silex must have been held in suspension or solution in the original soil which was probably moist. That some change has been induced upon the rock is evident from the fact that where it lies round the roots, which is the case with that tree about 3 feet from the shore, piled up, exactly as the rocks at Portland described by Professor Henslow (see fig. 3), numerous white spots, so frequent as to give the stone a mottled character, containing powdery silex, present themselves.

I see no other solution for this phenomenon than the supposition that the specks mark the site and passage of the fibres of the roots and that the cavities have been filled by it, unless they represent points of imperfect silicification. The case is in some degree analogous with that of common chalk flint (to the white varieties of which the rock is not dissimilar) in which similar white patches of powder frequently appear. That this substance is more decomposable than the rest is evident from another fact that the surface of the rock above the water is worn into little holes by the decay of this powder presenting an appearance externally as if it had been pierced by lithophagous animals.

In one of the fragments I found the silicified impression of part of the leaf of a glossopteris, proving distinctly that the siliceous character is of posterior date to that of the deposit itself. How this flinty or cherty semi-crystalline action has taken place may not be easy to explain, but received in connection with the trap dykes at Nobby's (of which this rock is a continuation) and the singular markings of iron upon them there, may we hazard the conjecture, suggested by Dr. Buckland, as to the origin of flint from the water of hot springs, and suppose that after the growth of the trees in their natural soil they either descended to a lower level and into an ocean heated by plutonic fires, or an inundation of heated water enveloped them and saturated the earth to a great depth. Howsoever it may be explained the phenomenon is one which involves much conjecture, and as at the south head of Reid's Mistake, similar beds contain trunks of trees passing vertically through them and others lying horizontally in them at a higher level than the sea, the trunks probably rising from roots at that level, it is clear that whether the soil was heated or not the enveloping matter similar to that in which the roots are fixed, must have been almost as much charged with silex as true flint itself.

That the semi-crystalline action took place after the entanglement of the trees seems plain from a curious fact that lines of division, apparently contraction joints (see fig. 4) pass through both the fossils and their matrix, and must, therefore, have been subsequent to the latter occurrence.

At the same time it must be admitted that though my own impression is these trees grew where they now stand, their roots do not extend (so far as has been yet examined) very far into the rock, nor is there any appearance of a drift-bed as at Portland, though the roots evidently may run down to the bed of lignite immediately under the flinty strata. It is also true, that immense quantities of broken fragments (apparently of branches) are found embedded in the sandstone and conglomerates above this horizon, which were undoubtedly drifted; but a similar fact has been noticed by me at Lytchett and Longfleet in Dorsetshire, where, in the borough of Poole, amongst the diluvial chert that covers the chalk and plastic clay-beds, portions of Portland Island conifers lie loose in the surface soil. In the same way, whatever the real soil of these Lake Macquarie fossils may have been, portions may also have been drifted with the pebbles and sand comprising the upper beds.

Fragments lying in the sandstone over the fossiliferous rock at Munniwarrie and Wollongong, and at Mulibimba (Newcastle), as well as on the surface at Wollon Hills and at Holworthy Downs, River Clyde, and elsewhere in this Colony, are of precisely the same appearance and nature of those fragments which I have found in Dorset, and in both cases I do not remember to have seen any of such drifted fragments but those which had lost their bark, whereas many of the trunks and stools of trees at Kurrar Kurran have the bark fossilised, and one or two in such a way as to show that it was torn partly from the tree whilst it stood, as if the tree had been broken down and the bark rent by the fall. In general, however, the bark where it can be traced is firmly fixed upon the trunk (fig. 2).

If we might assume that the lower lignite bed represent the soil, and the trunks and boughs to have been gradually enveloped by sinking down, as the siliceous rock was poured in the condition of wet sand; then the upper lignite bed might be supposed to represent the level of the upper branches, and in that case if the trees grew near the edge of a lagoon, or on the banks of an estuary, it is clear that the phenomena of two lignite beds and the overlying conglomerates containing fragments of fossil boughs are capable of satisfactory explanation and their present position would result from vertical changes of level.

A similar explanation has been adopted by Mr. Witham (Observations of fossil vegetables, p.7) quoted by De La Beche (Manual, p. 444) respecting the stem of erect sigillariae near Newcastle-on-Tyne, the roots being imbedded in a small seam of coal under the sandstone while they are all truncated on the line of the high main-coal bed to the formation of which their higher ends have in all probability partly contributed.

Respecting the true character of these trees reference may be made to the distinction pointed out by Dr. Buckland (B.T. Vol. I , p. 486) after Mr. Nichol, between the true pines and other coniferous trees. The structure of ordinary pines (he says) occurs in wood from the coal formation of New Holland; but in a note he adds, that a section of a tree from the same coal-field was like that of an Araucaria. Now if this distinction holds good, the Lake Macquarie trees are pines, exhibiting the concentric and radial and longitudinal structure with remarkable precision. As, however, it appears that both pines and araucarian trees occur both in the transitional coal and oolitic beds of Europe, no inference can be drawn as to the geological era of these Lake Macquarie trees. In Jamieson's Journal, January, 1833, p. 155, is given an analysis by Mr. W. Nichol of fossil woods from Newcastle Signal Hill, 200 (?)feet above the sea, to which are assigned the hardness of flint and specific gravity of 2.759. It is said to be of a coniferous tree.

This wood, I know, is like that of Lake Macquarie, and therefore the description and analysis of one may be assumed as that of the other. The colours are named as red, dark grey, and brown; there are also others composed of hydrated carbonate and red oxide of iron. Similar examples of these occur not far from the lake, but not at Kurrar Kurran. As this locality affords the greatest abundance of these fossils, so the history of it seems to offer the fittest occasion for observing how completely the occurrence of these trees exhibit an inference similar to that exhibited by the somewhat different features at the Isle of Portland - the alternate depression and elevation of a country.

If it be admitted that these trees grew where they are now rooted, it follows, of necessity, that notwithstanding there is no evidence of an alternation of fresh water and marine strata as at Portland, the dry land must have been submerged with its forests by a slow and gradual depression, till the siliceous bed had formed above it; and upon it not only had there accumulated a bed of vegetable matter (whether derived from drift or not), composing the upper lignite, but that the depression must have continued till the now partially denuded conglomerates and sandstones had been formed above them.

That they have arisen from that depression is proved by the fact that the upper bed of lignite is now at a considerable height above the level of the lower; and that the process of rising may still be going on is inferred from the fact that some of the fossil trees still remain in and under the water, and that the accumulation of alluvial soil is evenly spread over the edge of the lake by the action of the water under which it must more recently have been deposited.

Moreover, since very large eucalypti now grow upon this flat, and also large casuarinae at the very water's edge, it is clear that the flat is of a considerable age, and not altogether of yesterday’s formation. The usual occupier of new alluvial land - the mangrove tree - does not appear to be present, but on other hand there is no visible proof of modern trees of previous growth, and these facts in connection with the fossil trees being partly in the water and partly out, point to a graduate and programmic change of level. The trees could not have grown in the water where they now appear, and admitting that the alluvial flat does not prove what has been supposed just before, still, though lignite might have been deposited in a lake far above the sea, the trees proving the site of the dry land, even if never elevated, establish the fact of a deposition. Viewed, however, in connection with the dislocations and faults all round them, and with numerous other well-established phenomena of that class, which cannot here be further alluded to, these trees distinctly establish the inference of which, however, I posses even stronger evidence, that numerous alternations of level arid mutual risings and fallings have taken place to a great extent in New South Wales.

The argument is not much strengthened by the occurrence of the glossopteris in the sandstone surrounding the roots of the trees, for if the one was drifted so might the other have been, and if the one had grown there so might the other; but if in the case of the fossil trees near Manchester, described by Mr. Hawshaw (G.T. VI, p. 177), it be considered difficult to suppose how six trees could have been drifted vertically with their roots downwards, how much greater is the difficulty in supposing, perhaps, 60,000 (for along the coast of New South Wales they are innumerable) to have undergone a similar process of transportation in Australia!

Surrounded, as the roots are in some instances by an undoubted collection of the sandy matter, which has remained higher than the rest of the surface of the stratum, this could not have been so accumulated by the action of drifting. Moreover, there, as under the cliff at the South Head, we see similar examples with stems lying beside the stumps, and nearly all pointing the same way, the difficulty which was great before becomes incapable of any other solution than that the bed in which they occur was that in which they grew.

Though not necessarily connected with the preceding remarks, it may be observed here that about the same geological horizon, large stools, and stems and branches of trees occur both at Nirritimbah (Mutton-bird Island) off the sea entrance of Awaaba Inlet, and also along the beach at Newcastle and Red Head, and in Nobby's Island close to the coal or lignite beds. In the former case they are mineralized by a puddingstone (which lies immediately over the coal in Australia), and the fossils are, therefore, casts of trees in conglomerate. In the latter they are imbedded in a very pebbly grit passing into a puddingstone, and are mineralized by hydrate of iron. Trees of this mineral are there seen from 10 to 150 feet in length; and one remarkable example occurs of what is by some persons called a boat converted into iron, being the bark of an enormous tree so fossilized. It is 16 feet long, and in the widest part 6 feet 5 inches across.

At the time I inspected the last-named example, there lay a large pile of eucalypti and other trees upon the shore, the products of a violent flood in the Hunter; they had been washed out to sea and thrown up 5or 6 miles to the southward by the current and tides; and amongst them was a mass of bark of about the same size and general features, stripped from a tree. I cannot doubt, therefore, that some of our Australian fossils are drifted.

W.B. Clarke. Parramatta, 29th August, 1842.

 

1843 - W. B. Clarke, On a Fossil Pine Forest at Kurrur-Kurran, in the inlet of Awaaba [Lake Macquarie], East Coast of Australia, Proceedings of the Geological Society of London, 1843, IV(I), 161-4. Abstract only of the 1842 manuscript. This was the first published report on the geology of the site.

1845 - W.B. Clarke, On a Fossil Pine Forest at Kurrur-Kurran, in the inlet of Awaaba [Lake Macquarie], East Coast of Australia, The Sydney Weekly Register, 1845, V(107), 68-9. Copy of the abstract originally printed in the Proceedings of the Geological Society of London in 1843.

1884 - W.B. Clarke, On a Fossil Pine Forest at Kurrur-Kurran, in the inlet of Awaaba [Lake Macquarie], East Coast of Australia, Annual Report of the Department of Mines of N.S.W. for the Year 1884, Sydney, 1885, 156-9 plus map and figures. Original article signed and dated 'W.B. Clarke. Parramatta, 29th August 1842.'  This represents the first publication in full of Clarke’s original geological report on the site.  The circumstances of this can be inferred as follows:

Handbook (1902) to the mining and geological museum, Sydney with special references to the Mineralogical collections.  As this states, the Geological Surveyor began collecting (and also likely soliciting donations) in 1875.  In the Department of Mines Annual

Report for 1876, the donations made that year to the "Museum of Mines" in Sydney are listed. 

 

If, as seems from the above, all of Clarke's extensive materials, sold to the State of NSW, perished in the Garden Palace fire of 1882, how is it that we have Clarke's full manuscript being published in 1884?   The answer is found on page 148 of the Department of Mines annual report for that year.  There it is stated that Mr Mordant W. Clarke, the son of the late W.B. Clarke, had that year provided it to the Government Geologist, Mr. Wilkinson.

1892 - L.E. Threlkeld, An Australian language as spoken by the Awabakal: the people of Awaba or Lake Macquarie (near Newcastle, New South Wales) being an account of their language, traditions, and customs: by L.E. Threlkeld. Re-arranged, condensed, and edited, with an appendix, by John Fraser, Government Printer, Sydney, 1892. This volume included material compiled and published by Threlkeld between 1827-1959, including his 1834 note on the mythological background to the Fennel Bay fossil tree forest.

1904 - Fossil pine forest at Lake Macquarie becomes the first site of geological significance to be declared a reserve in the state of New South Wales. No action apparently was taken at the time to ensure the physical preservation of the site.

1907- T.W. Edgeworth David, The Geology of the Hunter River Coal Measures, New South Wales, Memoirs of the Geological Survey of New South Wales, Geology, Number 4, 1907, 372p. This publication includes a description of the fossil pine forests at Lake Macquarie, located within the Permo - Carboniferous cherts of the Newcastle Series. Two photographs of specimens are reproduced (plate XXX) opposite page 289, along with various sections featuring the fossil trees at Lake Macquarie and nearby areas.  The following photographs and section are from the memoir:

(2007 comment: As both show 'hollow centre'; might the left hand one have tumbled off the other?)

 

1914 - T.W. Edgeworth David, Maitland Handbook, Maitland District Scientific and Historical Research Association, 1914. The author makes reference to the fossil forest items as follows: "Awaba Tuff 42 ft thick of cherts and cherty shales with fossil forest of Dadoxylon trees 2-3 feet in diameter and about 120 feet high." The Awaba Fennell Bay fossil forest is located by him 10-40 feet below the coal seam known as the Great Northern Seam. The trees are allied to the modern Araucaria or Norfolk Island Pine.

1931 - L.J. Jones referred to Fennell Bay in his "Progress Report - Newcastle Coalfield" (NSW Department of Mines, unpublished, file CR/30/1540).  Jones referred to the unit beneath the Great Northern Seam as the "Fossil wood Cherts" or "Fossil Wood Chert Horizon", 12 to 60 feet thick.  Jones noted the fossil tree trunk sections ranged to nearly three feet in diameter.  Jones reported that trunk fragments occur embedded in the cherts at all angles.  Jones noted that "a number" of silicified trees were showing in the bay.  His report gives no indication that he was aware that others had previously regarded the site as a fossil forest.  His own impression, that silicified wood was embedded in the chert at all angles, presumably would not have inclined him to have viewed it as a forest preserved in situ.  

1940s - A local resident, Mr Hubert James Bear, collects specimens of the fossil trees from Lake Macquarie and uses them to erect a fence. He collects fossil wood from the general area and displayed specimens in his garden, suitably labelled as to their origin.  The Fennel Bay fossil tree segments in this fence were acquired by the local Council following Mr Bear’s death.

1968 - T.G. Vallance and D. Branagan,’ New South Wales Geology – Its Origins and Growth’, in A Century of Scientific Progress, Royal Society of New South Wales, Sydney, 1968, 265-279.

1974 - Neil Gunson, Australian Reminiscences of L.E. Threlkeld, missionary to the Aborigines, 1824-1859, Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, Canberra, 1974.

1975 - David Branagan, ‘Samuel Stutchbury and Reverend W.B. Clarke – not quite equal and opposite’, in Peter Stanbury (editor), 100 Years of Australian Scientific Exploration, Holt, Rhinehart and Winston, Artarmon, 1975, 89-98. Contains reproduction of part of Clarke’s manuscript notes of 1842 re the fossil pine forest at Kurrur-Kurran, along with his annotated map.

1993 - Greg Ray wrote in the Newcastle Herald on the bay's "secret heritage", a rare geological phenomenon, with an account of Mr Hubert Bear's interests and the picture of his fence made of segments of the silicified trees [photo as re-used later in Scanlon 2007, and which is also herein].

2005 - A Lake Macquarie Council business paper of 19 September 2005 discusses the Fennel Bay fossil forest and the fate of material collected by Mr Bear. It also make reference to the Aboriginal connection with the site.

 

2007 - An article by Mr M. Scanlon on the Fennel Bay fossil forest appeared in the Herald (Newcastle) newspaper.    Another more general article by Mike Scanlon in a historical feature "Fear and loathing.  Newcastle in the time of pioneer Reverend Lancelot Threlkeld, was young and restless", in the Herald of 21 July 2007, ranges widely over Threlkeld's life and times in the district.

 

(Mr Scanlon, pers. comm. indicates that other, earlier, newspaper references or photos taken by reporters may exist).

2008 -  The Branagan and Vallance (2008) article treating some previously unpublished correspondence of the Rev. W.B. Clarke added very interesting further facts to the general story.   This concerns letters from Clarke to William Sharp Macleay which were somehow acquired by Dr Thomas G. Vallance and transcribed initially by him.  After Dr Vallance died in 1993, his wife Hiliary passed much of Tom Vallance's historical jottings and memorabilia onto Dr David Branagan who has very similar interests.   Although this 2008 paper adds a great deal that is of interest re the fossil forest it strangely still states that Clarke discovered the site: "This letter is apparently the first mention of Clarke's discovery of the famous Kurrur Kurran Fossil forest ...".   This may be an accidental oversight as Branagan had earlier been informed of the 1834 description of it by Rev. L.E. Threlkeld.    

 

Fossil tree near Fassifern - Photo by Hubert James Bear

(Presumably within the Fennel Bay Fossil Forest but exact location unknown)

 

  The fossil tree fence/wall built by Hubert James Bear

 

FENNEL BAY - the fossil forest, earliest drawings:

Surviving original version of FIG. 2 above, from Clarke's notes or draft paper.   Note the strong transverse jointing or parting planes of the silicified trees, that Clarke termed "lines of section".  These gave rise to the trunk segments as used for Mr. Bear's fence.

 

Mr Hubert James Bear admires his 'fossil wood fence', at his home at 23 Venetia Avenue, Blackalls Park

(Photo:  The Herald, Newcastle)

 

 

WHERE GOETH THE FOREST FROM FENNELL BAY?

 

(CORRELATING/TRACING THE FOSSIL FOREST AND THE AWABA TUFF)

 

Geological correlation in coal measures is done largely from drill core.   The chances of a drill hole hitting a fossil tree in a fossil forest seem remote as there is little standing silicified tree wood know from any of the many  thousands of holes drilled on the coalfields of the Sydney Basin.

 

Eastwards, at the coast, the Great Northern Seam and close underlying strata come to the surface in the southwards dipping sequence at Catherine Hill Bay to Flat Rock Island.   At the beach there, Ghosties Beach, what is likely to be standing trees of the Fennell Bay Fossil Forest horizon are reported to be observed sometimes at low tide, according to how the beach sand is shifting.

 

To the west, the Awaba Tuff which contains the fossil forest is now known to extend as far west as Broke on the western side of the Lochinvar Anticline.   The Lochinvar Anticline is formed at an area that was a Permian palaeogeographic high of some sort, against which coal-bearing sequences thin (or 'condense') from both sides, and an early name for such phenomen was 'growth anticline'.   The Sydney Basin uppermost coal measures have been named the Wollombi Coal Measures west of the Lochinvar Anticline and the Newcastle Coal Measures east of it.   Around 1997 it was realised by NSW Geological Survey geologist D. Stevenson that units in the top of the Wollombi Coal Measures (known as Greigs Creek Coal Member, Hillsdale Coal Member, Nalleen Tuff Member, and Hobden Gully Coal Member) were equivalent to the Vales Point seam, Wallarah/Great Northern seam, Awaba Tuff, and Fassifern seam of the Newcastle Coal Measures (Stevenson, 1999).    Stevenson proposed that consideration be given to either elevating the main tuffaceous intervals to formation status or else entirely replacing the then existing Wollombi Coal Measures nomenclature with that of the Newcastle Coal Measures.   He and others (others in the Geological Survey and at University of Newcastle and Powercoal Pty Ltd) stressed the importance of ashfalls and tuffaceous units for correlation.   They proposed chemical studies (elemental analysis by X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy) and magnetic intensity studies, to determine if chemical and/or magnetic 'signatures' could be recognised for some of  the units.   Results of such attempted 'geochemical fingerprinting' of the tuffs are in Kramer et al. (1999, 2001) fully confirmed its usefulness. 

Thus there is high likelihood that the Nalleen Tuff Member is the Awaba Tuff.   Also, in another direction, to the southwest, the Burragorang Claystone Member shows a strong geochemical correlation with the Awaba Tuff (Grevenitz et al. 2003). 

 

In DM Broke DDH3 the Nalleen Tuff Member is 2.4m thick (at 118.4m depth).   It is buff coloured and fine silt sized except for the base which is coarser. It is carbonaceous with coally wisps towards the top. The underlying Hobden Gully Coal Member has tuff bands, like the Fassifern seam with which it is correlated.

 

DM Broke DDH3.   Base of Narrabeen Group gravels, Hillsdale seam (116m base) , Nalleen tuff (118.4m base)

and Hobden Gully seam (121.8m base).    (Photos:  GS2003/323).

 

Subsequent to Stevenson recognising the close similarity of the Wollombi and Newcastle Coal Measure sequences, particularly the Hillsdale Coal/Nalleen Tuff/Hobden Gully Coal and the Great Northern seam/Awaba Tuff/Fassifern seam sequences, Creech (2000) described the similarity of the seams near the top of the Wollombi Coal Measures at Anvil Hill located north of Denman in the upper Hunter Coalfield, with the Great Northern and Fassifern seams of the Newcastle Coalfield.   As a consequence of these observations, the Coalfield Geology Council of NSW established a working party to undertake a revision of the stratigraphy of the Wollombi Coal Measures. The working party subsequently recommended: that the entire Wollombi Coal Measure nomenclature be replaced with Newcastle Coal Measure nomenclature in the northern Sydney Basin.

 

Later coal drilling at Ridgelands,  20 kilometres north-west of Muswellbrook, found that the Awaba Tuff is present there also, along with the Great Northern and Fassifern seams.   The seams may be locally absent, eroded out by conglomerates.   The fully developed Fassifern seam ranges from 5.5-7.0 metres in thickness, and is directly overlain by the Awaba Tuff.    In the Ridgelands area the Awaba Tuff is generally intersected and is 2.5-3 m thick.   [GS2004/123 - The significance of an unusual, thick tuff unit, similar to the Awaba Tuff, intersected within the Great Northern sequence in DM Ridgelands DDH 2 was puzzling and remains unexplained].  

 

Except for the valleys of the Blue Mountains, places where the Awaba Tuff and the killed/silicified forest might extend to are not going to be readily able to be examined in outcrop.   One place of near-continous outcrop through the sequence, however, should be the coastline.   Note how David in 1907 there discerned a layer of "Fossil trees on horizon of the Awaba Trees of Fennel Bay" (Fennel Bay or Fennell Bay, both spellings occur):

 

 

Now going south from Swansea the Great Northern Seam, in the southwards-dipping sequence, reaches sea-level at the jetty at Catherine Hill Bay.

 

Therefore just below sealevel there, if the forest horizon continues widely, there should be fossil upright or standing trees.

 

Did anybody know of any?    Asking around the locals the answer was "No".

 

But then, accidentally almost, this was come across on the Internet:

 

http://webdiary.smh.com.au/archives/phil_uebergang_comment/001165.html - "Whilst snorkelling off Catherine Hill Bay, south of Newcastle, I happened to see embedded in the cliff face a polystrate fossil. This was a fossilised tree trunk that was orientated vertically in the cliff face and was perpendicular to the strata, which were near-horizontal. The tree trunk was quite large in diameter and quite long, extending up a significant length of the cliff face. I would estimate that the fossil was at least 5m in length".

 

That link is now (dead), as http://webdiary.smh.com.au domain no longer seems to exist.   The 'polystrate' trees are of particular interest to 'creation geology' (e.g. viz. such trees at the Joggins cliffs, Sydney - Nova Scotia - http://ianjuby.org/jogginsb.html ).   The commentator, who found the trees when snorkelling (some previous thirty years back) at Catherine Hill Bay, perhaps is connected to that sort of thing, as creation geology has been considerably interested in the Lower Pilot Seam trees at Swansea Heads.  Perhaps, but not necessarily, the commentator may have been 'Phil Uebergang' himself?     There may be more than one Phil Uebergang in Australia, but one in particular (still) contributes to something called "webdiary.com.au".   This Phil Uebergang is seen here connected with debate on "Origin of the species" (Darwin) but his last post there is 2005.   This would be the right Web Diary, and probably the right Phil Uebergang.  Margo Kingston founded Webdiary for the Sydney Morning Herald in July 2000.  It took on ant independent on August 22, 2005, and after 2005 Margot retired from it, leaving it  to be run by the members.  A contemporary (2005) comment on Margot's Webdiary mentions that Phil Uebegang lived in Townsville (http://www.kevgillett.net/?p=720).   

 

Apart from looking for Phil in regard to fossil trees below the Great Northern Seam, renewed local enquiry was encourged by finding the mention to Phil's discovery.  This further enquiry resulted in the information (David Poyzer, pers. comm.) that at low tide "fossilised remains of tree stumps" could be seen on the beach at Ghosties Beach south of Catherine Hill Bay.  David himself may not have seen these but informed the writer that they had been made known by a ranger from the Lake Munmorah State Park.   In January 2010, volunteer ranger Chris Morton took the below photo of a tree stump at low tide on Ghosties Beach:

 

   

 

Upright standing tree exposed at low tide on Ghosties Beach.   (Photos:  Chris Morton)

 

 

Large silicified tree cast upon the rocks at Ghosties Beach - inferred to have been excavated by the waves from largely unseen fossil

forest horizon there (located at around lowest tide level).    Note the fine-grained material in the knot hole at right, which might

be the volcanic ash matrix.    Even from the size of the knot hole alone, this would seem to have been a very large tree.

(Photo:  Chris Morton, 2010)

 

 

REFERENCES

Branagan, D., 1975.  "Samuel Stutchbury and Reverend W.B. Clarke – not quite equal and opposite", in Peter Stanbury (editor):  100 Years of Australian Scientific Exploration, Holt, Rhinehart and Winston.  Artarmon, pp. 89-98.  [Contains reproduction of part of W.B. Clarke’s manuscript notes of 1842 re the fossil pine forest at Kurrur-Kurran, along with his annotated map.  Branagan and Vallance 2008 also reproduces map.]

Branagan, D.F. and Vallance, T.G., 2008.  Some unpublished correspondence of the Rev. W.B. Clarke. Journal & Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales. Vol. 141, Parts 3-4, Nos. 429-430, pp. 1-31.

Clarke, W.B., 1843.  On a Fossil Pine Forest at Kurrur-Kurran, in the inlet of Awaaba [Lake Macquarie], East Coast of Australia, Proceedings of the Geological Society of London, 1843, IV(I), 161-164.  [Abstract only of Clarke’s 1842 manuscript report. Read to the Society on 22 February 1843.]

Clarke, W.B., 1843.  On a Fossil Pine Forest at Kurrur-Kurran, in the inlet of Awaaba [Lake Macquarie], East Coast of Australia.  Annals and Magazine of Natural History.  First Series, 472-476. Reproduced from the Proceedings of the Geological Society of London.

Clarke, W.B., 1845.  On a Fossil Pine Forest at Kurrur-Kurran, in the inlet of Awaaba [Lake Macquarie], East Coast of Australia.  Weekly Register of Politics, Facts, and General Literature.  Sydney, 9 August 1845, V(107), 68-9.   (A reprinted version of Clarke's paper which varies somewhat from the manuscript of 1842, both in regard to grammar and Clarke’s removal of English references.)

Clarke, W.B., 1884.  On a Fossil Pine Forest at Kurrur-Kurran, in the inlet of Awaaba [Lake Macquarie], East Coast of Australia.  Annual Report of the Department of Mines of N.S.W. for the Year 1884.  Sydney, 1885, pp. 156-9, plus map and figures - Original article signed and dated 'W.B. Clarke. Parramatta, 29th August 1842.'  [ This became the first complete publication of Clarke’s original 1842 manuscipt, accompanied by lithographed copies of his original illustrations] 

Creech M.K., 2000. The Wollombi Coal Measures – Refugees from Newcastle.  Proc. 34th Newcastle Symposium on Advances in the Study of the Sydney. Basin. Univ. Newcastle, NSW Australia, 71-78.

Creech M.K. 2002. Tuffaceous deposition in the Newcastle Coal Measures:  challenging existing concepts of peat formation in the Sydney Basin, New South Wales, Australia. International Journal of Coal Geology 51, 185-214.

Edgeworth David, T.W., 1907.  The Geology of the Hunter River Coal Measures, New South Wales.  Memoirs of the Geological Survey of New South Wales.  Geology series, Number 4, 372 pp.  Sydney.

Evans P.R. and Migliucci, A., 1991.  Evolution of the Sydney Basin during the Permian as a foreland basin to the Currarong and New England Orogen.   Newcastle Symposium on the Advances in the Study of the Sydney Basin.   University of Newcastle, Department of Geology.  Vol. 25,  pp. 22-29.

Grevenitz, P. , Carr, P. , Hutton, A. 2003.  Origin, alteration and geochemical correlation of Late Permian airfall tuffs in coal measures, Sydney Basin, Australia.   International Journal of Coal Geology.  Vol. 55, No. 1, pp. 27-46

Jones, 1926.  Coal resources of the Newcastle-Maitaland district.   NSW Department of Mines, Geological Survey.  30 pp.

Kramer, W. , Weatherall, G., Offler, R., and Wadsworth, J., 1999.   Correlation of tuffs in the Newcastle and Wollombi Coal Measures based on geochemical fingerprinting.   Pp. 125-132 in Thirty Third Newcastle Symposium on the Advances in the Study of the Sydney Basin.   Department of Geology, University of Newcastle.    

Kramer, W. , Weatherall, G. and Offler, R., 2001.  Origin and correlation of tuffs in the Permian Newcastle and Wollombi Coal Measures, NSW, Australia, using chemical fingerprinting.   International Journal of Coal Geology.  Vol.  47, No. 2,  pp. 115-135.

Moyal, Ann, 2003.  The Web of Science. The Scientific Correspondence of the Rev. W.B. Clarke, Australia's Pioneer Geologist.  2 vols.  Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne.

Organ, M.A. 1990.   Clarke, Coal and Controversy: the traumas of Reverend W.B. Clarke in his defence of Australian geology during the nineteenth century.  University of Wollogong, Academic Services Division - Papers.   [This was a conference paper originally published in Hutton, AC (ed), Papers and Proceedings of the Southern and Western Coalfields Geological Conference, University of Wollongong, February 1990, 1-10.]   Downloadable - http://ro.uow.edu.au/asdpapers/33/  [Direct download link - http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1030&context=asdpapers ].  

Owen, R., 1859.  Description of some remains of a gigantic land-lizard (Megalania prisca, Owen) from Australia.  Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London.  Vol. 149, pp. 43-48.

Ray, G., 1993. Lake's secret heritage a rare geological phenomenon. The Newcastle Herald. Monday 1 March, 1992, page 1.

 

Gregory J. Retallack, G.J., 1999.   Postapocalyptic greenhouse paleoclimate revealed by earliest Triassic paleosols in the Sydney Basin, Australia.  Bulletin, Geological Society of America.  Vol. 111, No. 1, pp. 52-70.

 

Scanlon, M., 2007.  Fear and loathing.  Newcastle in the time of pioneer Reverend Lancelot Threlkeld, was young and restless.

History feature in the Herald newspaper, Newcastle, 21 July 2007.

 

Stevenson, D. 1999.  The Wollombi Coal Measures.   Pp. 115-123 in Thirty Third Newcastle Symposium on the Advances in the Study of the Sydney Basin.   Department of Geology, University of Newcastle.    

 

Threlkeld, L. E., 1827.   Specimens of a Dialect, of the Aborigines of New South Wales; being the First Attempt to Form their Speech into a Written Language.

 

Threlkeld, L. E., 1834.   An Australian Grammar: comprehending the principles and natural rules of the language, as spoken by the Aborigines in the vicinity of Hunter’s River, Lake Macquarie, &c., New South Wales.  Stephens & Stokes, Sydney, 1834, 131pp.  [ Reprinted in Threlkeld,. 1892].

 

Threlkeld, L. E., 1836.   An Australian Spelling Book in the Language spoken by the Aborigines, in the Vicinity of Hunter's River, Lake Macquarie, New South Wales.

 

Threlkeld, L. E., 1850.  A Key to the Structure of the Aboriginal Language.  

Threlkeld, L.E., 1892.   An Australian language as spoken by the Awabakal: the people of Awaba or Lake Macquarie (near Newcastle, New South Wales) being an account of their language, traditions, and customs: by L.E. Threlkeld. Re-arranged, condensed, and edited, with an appendix, by John Fraser, B.A., LL.D.  Government Printer, Sydney.    [This also reproduces material already published by Threlkeld between 1827-1859.]

Vallance, T.G., 1981.  "The Fuss about Coal’, in D.J. and S.G.M. Carr (editors): Plants and Man in Australia.  Academic Press, Sydney, 1981, pp. 136-176.

Wabrooke, P.R. 1987.   Depositional and chemical environments in Permian coal forming swamps from the Newcastle area. In: The Twenty Eighth Newcastle Symposium on Advances in the Study of the Sydney Basin. Newcastle, N.S.W. Australia.  University of Newcastle.  pp. 1–9.