July 1951 School Magazine

July. 1951

Brisbane Girls' Grammar School Magazine

July, 1951

:Brisba ne Girls ' Grammar School Magazine

surprised to see a cassowary with its brilliant blue cre.st standing beside the road. Its curiosity caused it to remam long enough to enable us to survey it quickly, but fear soon overcame it, and it plunged back into the thick undergrowth. Just as the sun was setting in its bath of red and gold, we reached the Atherton Tableland. The road wound along the summits of the ranges, and we looked down into lovely valleys in the .!:::attorn of which dairy-cattle lazily grazed. Soon after passing the township of Malanda with its large butter factory, we reached the Malanda Falls. A few minutes was all the time we were able to spend there, as darkness was falling, and Atherton, our destination for that night, was still many miles away. Because of its elevation, the Atherton Tableland was cold even in January, and after driving for another two hours, we welcomed the warm beds which were awaiting us when we reached Atherton. An early rising was made on the following day as our object was to reach the Tully Falls by noon. We travelled once more through rich dairying country until we reached the timber area. Tully Falls were beautiful. They fell in an al- most unbroken line until they crashed onto the jagged rocks below, where one slip meant death. vVe left Tully Falls at l p.m. and retraced our path until we reached the turnoff to the "Crater" which we had resolved to see on our return journey. A fitting word to describe _the "Crater" is "awful'·'. About a hundred feet below the rocks on which we stood lay a slimy green scum under which we could see, in places, black, evil-looking water. The "Crater" is the crater of an extinct volcano, and its waters are stagnant and bottomless. Atherton was reached again by 4 p.m., and from there we set out for Lake Eacham, which we reached at 6 p.m. In my opinion, Lake Eacham was the most beautiful place we visited. There were no signs of a busy tourist trade, in fact, only a small area on one side of the lake had been cleared, cut Nature had been kind at this spot. Even at six o'clock, when the sun had set. the lake retained its beautiful b lue colour. At Lake Eacham, we were fortunate enough to have the exhilarating experience of a speedboat ride around the lake, a lovely end to our day..

We decided to return to Cardwell that night, from Lake Eacham. Darkness descended quickly and soon no scenery was visible bu t we welcomed the cover of the night to en- able us to ~editate on all the beauty we had seen during ihose two g lorious days. We reached Cardwell at midnight, weary but very happy people after our four hundred mile tour. The memories of those joy-filled days in the North will always remain vivid in my mind, and I sincerely hope the day will soon come when the lovely North will receive th.e praise and honour that its beauty warrants. - JANICE A. RALPH, V. HONEYMOONERS' P'ARADISE The Jenolan Caves, a justly-famed tourist resort, lie hid- den in the rocky fastnesses of the beautiful Blue Mountains, not far distant from Sydney, and form one of the many natural beauty spots with which this our land is so richly en- - dowed. In those deep caves, so long shrouded and silent in black mystery, you find such sparkling beauty, such visions of delicate grace and colour:, such lofty grandeur, as far out- strip the imagined splendour of Kubla Khan's sunny pleasure dome of ice. From science, we learn that all this airy grace has long and slowly grown, to blossom into its present beauty. The story begins in the first chapter of life on our planet, the Palaeozoic Age. Then, the land which was later to rise and become Australia, was beneath the o.cean. It was then that ihe limestone of the Jenolan caves was formed, from deep sea ooze, mollusc shells and coral; for these limestone rocks of Jenolan clearly show that once the sea, teeming with whales and sharks, shells and corals, and all those countless beautiful but minute forms . of marine life, rolled deep over the country. This was in the Silivian period of the Palaeozoic Age. Age succeeded age, until the sea bed rose and became land. Yet this was still long ages past, for Australia is an old, old land. The Kosciusko plateau was old even when Europe still lay beneath the heaving ocean, silently those mountains witnessed in Tertiary times the rising of the land that was gradually to assume the shape of Australia . When the sea had thus passed away from the land, the 39

38