The discovery of bones at Cunningham Creek, near Harden, N. S. Wales
Abstract
[No abstract is given, the work begins as follows] The Cunningham Creek Gold-field is situated about fourteen miles south-east of Murrumburrah and Harden. The" diggings" lies along both sides of the creek, above and below the Jugiong Road-crossing to Cunningham Plains, reaching almost down to its junction with the more important Jugiong Creek. The whole of this district is composed of grey granite cropping out here and there in bosses and tors, otherwise a thick granitic detritus hides the bedrock completely, and in consequence a subsequent denudation has given rise to gently rolling downs and hills. It -is in this detritus that the bones of extinct Marsupials have been found for some time past, generally lying immediately above the auriferous wash-dirt of the old subsidiary branches of Cunningham Creek. The claim of Messrs. J. F. Wilson and Party, who first reported the discovery, is situated on the north bank of the creek, the shaft mouth being about seventy feet above the creek bed, and on the Cunningham Creek Common, barely a mile south-west of Cahill's Hotel. The shaft is down sixty feet in fine granitic detritus, interspersed with large boulders of granite. The bones are usually met with at fifty-eight feet from the surface, and, as before stated, immediately above the wash-dirt, but from the wet … [etc.]
