Atlas Page 83
By Henry T. Burgess

THE title is a misnomer. South Australia comprises nearly a third of the continent of Australia, through which it extends from south to north. It is bounded on the west by the colony of Western Australia, and on the east by those of Queensland, New South Wales, and Victoria. In area, it covers nine hundred and three thousand four hundred and twenty-five square miles, and is larger than the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Spain, and Portugal put together. Its land frontiers are straight lines indicated by degrees of longitude, the only break being at the angle formed by south-western Queensland; but the coastlines are extremely irregular. In the north, Arnhem Land pushes a bold peninsula into the Arafura Sea with deep indentations and a fringe of islands, and at the south two gulfs penetrate far inland. They are divided by a boot-shaped peninsula which in its general configuration is not unlike Italy, and from Cape Spencer at its point to the shallow inlet at the head of Spencer’s Gulf are nearly three degrees of latitude. The southern coastline, from the order of Victoria to that of Western Australia, measures at least two thousand miles.

From Cape Jervis, at the southern extremity of the Gulf of St. Vincent, a succession of mountain ranges runs almost due north for two hundred miles. Mount Lofty, at its highest point, is two thousand three hundred and thirty-four feet above the sea level, and it gives a general name to these ranges, but they have several local designations. They consist not merely of a single spine but of a series of parallel chains, among which are wide, well-grassed valleys and fertile plains. The hills are clothed with magnificent eucalyptus of several varieties, and in the southern part of the colony every gully has its streamlet. From near the head of Spencer’s Gulf, the Flinders Range stretches far into the interior. Its loftiest peaks are Mounts Remarkable, Brown, Arden, and Searle, each of which is upwards of three thousand feet in height. Westward of Port Augusta are the Gawler Ranges, which reach an elevation of two thousand feet. In the interior are several considerable mountain chains, including the Musgrave, MacDonnell, Strangways, and Reynolds Ranges. Near the northern coast the country is an elevated plateau, but no high mountains have yet been discovered. Eastward of the Mount Lofty range endless plains stretch away, into New South Wales and Victoria, and westward those in which Adelaide is situated are bounded by the Gulf. A vast, shallow depression occurs to the north and west of the Flinders Range, which in some places is below the level of the sea.

The only navigable river in the southern part of the colony is the Murray, which, entering it from the east between New South Wales and Victoria, pursues a tortuous course through the plains till it reaches the outermost slopes of the still distant ranges, when it turns abruptly southward, nearing the coast spreads out into vast sheets of water, and finally enters the ocean at Encounter Bay. The streams which descend from the hills are roaring torrents in the time of winter floods, but the rapidity of their fall is such that they speedily exhaust themselves, and in summer are mere rivulets connecting chains of ponds. Many watercourses are found in the interior, and some of them extend for hundreds of miles; but their character varies with the season. Cooper’s Creek, the Diamantina, and other streams from south-western Queensland, at times inundate the country for thousands of miles. The Finke, the Macumba, the Todd, and many others, either lose themselves in the plains or find their way to the inland lakes. The Northern Territory has many important waterways which have not yet been fully explored. The Roper is navigable for a hundred miles, and the Adelaide, the Alligator Rivers, and many more will admit vessels of light burden.

On the map the lakes of South Australia cover a considerable surface, but they have little of beauty, interest, or value to boast about. Lakes Alexandrina, Albert, and the Coorong form a connected system near the mouth of the Murray. They are navigable by small vessels, and the last-named, though seldom more than two miles across, runs for ninety miles parallel with the ocean beach, from which it is separated by a strip of sand-hills from one to three miles wide. Lakes Hawdon and Bonney, like great numbers of others in the southeast, are only rushy meres. On maps issued from the government offices thirty years ago, an immense horseshoe was vaguely delineated, which beginning a short distance north of Spencer’s Gulf swept round the termination of the Flinders Range into the plains of the Darling. Its assumed margin measured at least eight hundred miles, and it was called Lake Torrens. Within that extraordinary basin Lakes Frome, Blanche, Eyre, and Torrens are now accurately defined. They are expanses of black mud, with shallow sheets of salt-water, saline incrustations, and scattered bushes —dreary expanses of unprofitable bog. To the west is another and similar series, of which Lake Gairdner is the largest, and farther north, stretching across the Western Australian border, are the salt - marshes despairingly named Lake Amadeus by their discoverer, the full extent of which has not yet been ascertained. Nature, as if to make amends for this general niggardliness of scenic effect, has crowded a wealth of loveliness, that can scarcely be exaggerated, into the lakes that lie in the craters of Mount Gambier.

Though South Australian scenery must be pronounced, on the whole, tame when placed in comparison with the showplaces of the world, it has an abundance of natural beauty, and the impressions that were formed of its wide interior by early explorers have had to be entirely abandoned. It has been said that explorers do not usually deal in half-lights; they find either paradise or just the reverse, and in their descriptions are prodigal of superlatives. Hence, perhaps, the hideous picture of Sturt’s Stony Desert that was so highly overdrawn. It. has proved to be good sheep country, and the area of actual wilderness is shrinking every year.

Geologically, South Australia is extremely interesting. A metal-bearing formation extends from Kangaroo Island, roughly parallel with the gulfs, to near Lake Blanche; it includes the main mountain chains, and widens out to the New South Wales border opposite the Barrier Range. The rocks belong to the oldest of the sedimentary series and outcrops of the same formation are to be seen in many places rising like islands above the surrounding and newer strata. Much of the interior must be classed as secondary, including the great stony downs and tablelands, where sandstone, conglomerate, quartzite, gypseous clays, and limestone, in some places highly fossiliferous, are met with. Nearly parallel with the coast at the Great Bight, extending far inland over the Nullarbor Plain and continuing north of Lake Torrens till it reaches the eastern boundary, is a broad expanse of tertiary and post-tertiary deposits, interrupted, however, by plutonic rocks at the Gawler Ranges and the primaries that have been referred to. In some places the tertiaries are three hundred feet in thickness, and seem to indicate a period of slow submergence when beds of sandstone and limestone rich in marine fossils were formed. Plutonic rocks occur in several localities, and in the extreme southeast is a series of extinct volcanoes, of which Mounts Gambier and Schank are the most noteworthy. South Australia is unfortunate in the utter absence of carboniferous or carbonaceous rocks, but it has some compensation in its almost unlimited agricultural and pastoral land and in the extent and variety of its mineral deposits.

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