The Rocks Beneath

Abstract

The winter of the year 1818 in what is now northern New South Wales was extremely cold, frosty and wet. That winter a party of explorers led by John Oxley struggled with their horses and dogs through bogs and across flooded rivers to be the first official expedition from the Sydney-based colony to reach the New England Tableland. They had entered what seemed to be a strange, almost inverted landscape. That the lowlands adjacent to the Liverpool Plains were boggy after heavy rain Oxley could understand, but he was puzzled that even as he left the plains and entered the highlands all the way up he encountered numerous 'wet hollows'. As he approached the Great Escarpment from the west the only indication of high altitude was the hard August frost. Also, instead of displaying the serrations of a mountain range, as experience had led them to expect, the land remained one of gentle rolling relief.