At two o'clock we arrived at Limestone
Creek, passing through a beautiful picturesque country of low hills and
fine valleys well watered: the timber, as usual of diminutive growth,
and unfit for any useful purpose. The ridges of the higher eminences
were invariably stony, and about a mile and a half from the Creek, there
is a narrow slip of barren country covered with small slate stones: the
soil until then was on the sides of the hills of a fine vegetable mould,
the more level and lower grounds a hazel-coloured stiff loam, both
equally
covered with grass, particularly the anthistria. The timber standing
at wide intervals, without any brush or undergrowth, gave the country a
fine park-like appearance. I never saw a country better adapted for the
grazing of all kinds of stock than that we passed over this day. The
limestone, which is the first that has hitherto been discovered in
Australia, abounds in the valley where we halted; the sides and abrupt
projections of the hills being composed entirely of it, and worn by the
operation of time into a thousand whimsical shapes and forms. A small
stream runs through the valley, which in June 1815 was dry; the bottom
of this rivulet was covered with a variety of stones, but the bases of
the hills which projected into it, and from which the earth had been
washed, were of pure limestone of a bluish grey colour.
April 24.
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