GOULBURN PLAINS.

Goulburn Plains consist of open downs affording excellent pasturage for sheep and extending twenty miles southward from the township, their breadth being about ten.

A GARDEN.

I reached at twilight the house of a worthy friend, Captain Rossi, who received me with great kindness and hospitality.  The substantial improvements which he had effected on his farm since my last visit to that part of the colony evinced his skill and industry as a colonist; while an extensive garden and many tasteful arrangements for domestic comfort marked the residence of a gentleman.  Under that hospitable roof I exchanged the narrative of my wanderings for the accumulated news of seven months which, with my friend’s good cheer, rendered his invitation to rest my horses for one day quite irresistible.

October 31.

A walk in the garden; a visit to the shearing shed; the news of colonial affairs in general; fat pullets cooked a la gastronome and some good wine; had each in its turn rare charms for me.

PUBLIC WORKS.

I had arrived in a country which I had myself surveyed; and the roads and towns in progress were the first fruits of these labours.  I had marked out in 1830 the road now before me, which I then considered the most important in New South Wales as leading to the more temperate south, and I had now completed it as a line of communication between Sydney and the southern coasts.  This important public work on which I had bestowed the greatest pains by surveying the whole country between the Wollondilly and Shoalhaven rivers, had been nevertheless retarded nearly two years on the representations of some of the settlers, so that the part most essential to be opened continued still in a half finished state.*

(Footnote.  A petition had been got up in favour of another line said to be more direct; and it is a remarkable fact that numerous signatures were obtained even to such a petition, although it was found at last that the line laid down after a careful survey was not only twelve chains shorter than the other proposed but also avoided the steepest hills.)

SHOALHAVEN RIVER.

The Shoalhaven river flows in a ravine about 1500 feet below the common level of the country between it and the Wollondilly.  Precipices consisting at one part of granite and at another of limestone give a peculiar grandeur to the scenery of the Shoalhaven river.

LIMESTONE CAVERNS THERE.

The limestone is of a dark grey colour and contains very imperfect fragments of shells.  We find among the features on these lofty riverbanks many remarkable hollows not unaptly termed hoppers by the country people, from the water sinking into them as grain subsides in the hopper of a mill.  As each of these hollows terminates in a crevice leading to a cavern in the limestone below, I descended into one in 1828 and penetrated without difficulty to a considerable depth