> 23 Sept 1966 (Friday)
Jack Mahoney & self left Brisbane, Falcon car hired from Budget Motors. Cameras:C at 18, B&W at 1, Toowoomba, 3/4 toilet rolls. Chinchilla fill up, back towards Brigalow to rifle range. Turn off immediately after seeing things, follow down fence line , not road to firing points. End of road at point close to  Condamine R. & gully system. Walked down to junction of gully system and Condamine R. Immediately started finding v. small scraps of bone - all broken in the chocolate brown earth of the bank. V. difficult to see in this soft fine earth. Worked back up the gully system keeping to the east side and going up the small branch gullys that run down from the top. Soon found that the most obvious concentrations of bone are at the higher levels where the earth is a gritty sand & not the fine chocolate earth. Bone extremely plentiful but all broken up. Preservation very variable, I get the impression that most of the material is broken and reworked before deposition but that also the fact that the the material is often in the B. horizon or above results in v. much change to specimens. Found a very rich patch with a complete bird vertebra just below a consolidated grit horizon and small[?] layer : shell fragments (associated but broken in the matrix) partly excavated these but decided to wait until next day before removing them. This concentration is so promising that we will buy a pick & shovel and dig out a section. The main part of the concentration lies above the grit.

Back to Chinchilla. While driving at dusk along the rifle range fence  several (3) wallabies seen in the way getting back into the rifle range. This is a wallaby v. like a brush, v. long tail, travels with its head down like a brush [sketch] . Can there be something in the story of relationships between ima, greye and ponzi after all [sketch map of area].

General impressions of Downs.

Driving up from Brisbane to Toowoomba first of all cross the coastal plain with some isolated (?) volcanics[?] and then start to climb up the range. Some of the vallies to the east of the range clearly contain sediments related to the present valley systems. Once you get over the top of the range the valleys open out (W. of Toowoomba) to give flat bottomed valleys. Very mature with sluggish winding creeks crossing them. The soils are black, clearly derived from the surrounding volcanics. Almost all material cultivated with a few small patches of savannah woodland in the little rises left uncovered with alluvium. The creeks that flow through these Eastern Downs are the classic localities - Gowrie Creek, King's Creek etc. But many of the specimens sent to Owa[?] also came out of wells that the early settlers put down. Settlement took place at Warwick in 1840.

Driving west immediately you pass through Dalby the situation changes - you get into sandstones and immediately the vegetation becomes poorer. Acacia, Callitris, Casuarina etc and fences look poor. Ths seems to be the parent material of the Chinchilla Sand of the Western Downs deposits.

10 miles beyond Kogan we turned northwards off the sandstone to get onto the Brigaloo-Chinchilla Rd. and immediately got into sediments of the Condamine with richer earth but, in exposures, also a sandy gravel. These can be seen in the Condamine where the bridge crosses it on the internal ring road. Soon afterwards you join the Brigalow-Chinchilla Rd and the rifle range is between it and the Condamine R. an excellent place. "overmatic" timber - probably the only natural piece of sand in the vicinity, plenty of possum, wallaby and small round droppings. Bats flying in the evening, mosquitoes aweful.

> 24th Sept. 1966 Saturday
Paid motel $3 each. Drove out to Rifle Range. Excavated supposed skull found it to be the plastron of a chelonian. Dug in the vicinity but little success, then followed out the horizon but found it had little vertical depth. Apparently not more than 6ft but it outcropped in the head of all the distributing gullies to the east of the main gully. Collected at several localities and got a Ceratodus toothplate (incomplete) and a great many fragments of chelonian material.

Walked up to the head of the main gully. This gully is a valley fill within the Chinchilla sand [C18] taken down gully from head to show narrow gully cutting back into alluvium. Went down to Condamine to look for bone there, a few scraps that is all.

Went up the Western side of the Gully system, found the same horizon true but also that there is much more of the blackish alluvium there and the gullies are mostly cutting through this. There is bone in this but it could be reworked from Chinchilla sand or belong to that alluvial fill.

Back to Chinchilla for lunch. Walked up the western side again. In one of the gullies near the head we got into the Chinchilla sand and I collected a mandible of ? L. gracilis from just under the consolidated horizon which often occurs in tha Chinchilla sand in the vicinity of bone. Unfortunately broken with only M4 in position, still, our first mandible !

Walked across the rifle range up to its Eastern boundary. This is another gully system dune of the same sort : main gully in the blackish alluvia, tributaries reaching out into the Chinchilla sand particularly in the East (in this case they extend into improved pasture and there is little erosion but sufficient to show presence of the fossil.... layer) [C19] of improved pasture and little native erosion.[C20/1]of the gully head in the Chinchilla sands (plastron loc.)

Picked up the fossils and then drove down to the river where[C24,5,6] of the Condamine first two looking upstream ie Eastwards to show the terrace on the Northern bank, last Westwards to show terrace on the Southern bank.

In my opinion the sediments at Chinchilla belong to two quite different phases. There is an old sediment (ie the Chinchilla sand) which is exposed in its fossiliferous horizon in the heads of gullies and in its full length in the bank of the river immediately to the West of the gully system along the Western boundary of the Rifle Range.

There is a much later (probably upper Pleistocene, Condamine alluvium) which is represented by the river terraces at about 20ft al by the alluvium fill in the filled valleys of the Chinchilla sand which is being cut out by the present Condamine R. and its distributing gullies [sketch of gully].

Next page sketch of gully w. to e.: Modern soil, Condamine alluvium, main gully, tributary gully, fossil layer above Chinchilla sand. Suspected structure in section across the main gully and along the length of one of its eastern tributaries.

It seems very clear that the key to this problem will be an accurate mapping study of the levels of the "Condamine alluvium" in the valley system and its relation to the terrace in the actual river valley. This should be done because, if the Condamine alluvium is in the valley of the gully system then anything collected in this will be a mixture of recooled[?] Chinchilla sand fence and the Upper Pleistocene, whereas only that from the upper part of the section will be truly Chinchilla Sand fence[?].

Drove back to Eastern , spent night in Dalby Hotel-motel.

> 25 Sept Sunday.
Drove back towards Toowoomba, turned off to Kingsthorpe soon after Gowrie Creek crossed the main road [C27] of creek and bank with volcanics in background. It seems to us that these small creeks are originally[?] the Dunes at present and writing[?] back into the hills of volcanics to the east of them. Gowrie used to be a station which included Kingsthorpe. Drayton[C28] looking south (see basalt hills), [C29] looking north into the hills. Drayton is in a small valley before it widens out into the main Downs[?]. I suspect that the alluvium is very confined between the basalt hills (which is exposed beyond the bridge in [C28].

[C30] General view looking eastwards between Drayton & Eton Vale. Filled up at East Greenmount. King Creek at 033454 [?]. Walked out exposure [C31] taken looking E-A with look[?] of creek and major exposure on South side (Rt of picture). Collected miscellaneous bones. Drove to the King Creek at Clifton, a couple of miles E of the town there is a good exposure on the north of the road. Collected a mandible (fragment) and scraps of bone. Good exposures. Back to Brisbane via Pilton. Excellent exposures on a neck in a small valley just before recircling[?] the divide. Should be excellent exposures of Pleistocene.

> 1st Oct. 1966.
Visit to the new (?) Pliocene loc. at Merriwa[?] with Jack Mahoney. On the way called on Mrs Collin of    who used to be Nurse Bateson of the late hospital on Barrier & Dome[?] Islands. Took notes on considerable information & in particular notes on photographs which Dr Robert Collin (son in Perth) had allowed Battye Library to copy. Drove to Merriwa via Wollombi and Denman. Finished kodachrome on the road through the Hawkesbury sandstone. New film [C0] Dande[?] looking w. from north[?] of Denman Permian sandstone with Hawkesbury Triassic on the top. Valley of the tributaries of the Hunter R. Merriwa.

Drove out to Cutty[?] 6 miles from Merriwa just across Bow Creek - at Bow Post Office on the Cassilis-Coolah Rd. Photo from top of hill down towards Merriwa[C1] to show Jurassic Sandstones exposed : valley side. basalt, and black soil hill sides.[C2] is taken looking away from Merriwa to show the land surface above the valley.

The section is rather variable : basically with decomposed basalt at the base, a coarse pebble conglomerate above grinding into gravels and alluvium with a black soil on top. It seems likely that the depositional phase is continous from the coarse pebble conglomerate to the top and that the black soil is not indicative of a separate depositional phase following the fossil depositing period. Collected scraps of bone throughout the sequence above the basalt. Seems to be most concentrated in a clay horizon which is often associated with the coarse pebble conglomerate [sketch].

Drove to Wellington. Bright moonlight, very poor roads mostly dirt roads - very corrugated. Only a few dead rabbits as compared with my memory of Eastern roads before the war when rabbits were everywhere. Arrived Wellington abt 10pm, motel booked out and no accomodation at hotels either. Some sort of convention (political) together with long weekend. Drove over to Dubbo but position hopeless there. Back to Wellington to sleep in car if need be - tried Grand Hotel & lucky enough to get cancellations just phoned through. To bed at 11.30.

> 2nd October. Sunday.
Wellington. Drove out to caves [C3/4] taken looking away from Wellington turn down the valley of the Bell towards the Caves. Catombal Ra. on the right (Upper Devonian Quartzites & Conglomerates). The caves are along the foothills. Valley soil is a terra rossa derived from the limestones of the lower slopes.

At Wellington Caves : kiosk at foot of little hill of limestone boulders much fissured between. [C5] section exposed in the cutting leading into the 1913 phosphate mine showing fissures extending to surface[C6] ditto but close up showing a filled and an unfilled fissure. [C7]The surface of a limestone outcrop showing fissures between boulders.[C8] The base cave showing the fissure extending to the surface outside the entrance to the working. This "cave" seems to be a modern part of the phosphate mine. It is distinct from Mitchell's breccia cave and is not mentioned by Ramsay or Krafft. About all modern bone comes from this[?].

Collected bone from inside. Condition of breccia very variable, in some places the fissures are filled with a soft terra rossa with heavily leached and very fragile base[?]. In other places a hard breccia with crystals of calate[?] in the cavities. The breccias also contain numerous large pebbles - probably from the surface and even some charcoal. It might to be possible to get a carbon check[?].

Wellington, drove back to Sydney....