PREHISTORIC SYDNEY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18899, 27 June 1923, Page 7

PREHISTORIC SYDNEY.

.From Odb Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, June' 2L Sydney, like the woman who sees heraelfs getting old, does the best to arrest the hand of time, and to mask its age by a spirit of gaiety and effervescent, jazzing youth, rsut it has been exposed. In a seemingly dry-as-dust lecture on the “Geology of the Sydney District,” at the Sydney Museum a few nights ago, by Mr T. Hodge Smith, it was revealed that Sydney, in fact, is as old aa the eternal lulls; its history, according to Mr Smith, is far more ancient than man itself. Indeed, but Mr Smith did not say eo, Sydney would be better symbolised as aij old man with a flowing, patriarchal beard, instead of a gilded youth with a toothbrush moustache. For Mr Smith tells us that-’ 250,000,000 years ago the present site of Sydney was covered by a sea, which gradually subsided until 50,000,000 years later there developed a huge swamp covered with vegeta. tion. From the accumulation of this vegetation we derived our present coal deposits. Mr Smith went on to say that at one stage a volcano, claimed to be the largest in the history of the earth, existed close to where the thriving town of Muswellbrook nowstands. It is to be hoped, by the way, that the volcano is quite dead. Again, we had a period when the Blue Mountains did not exist, and when huge animals, now extinct, wandered, not only through Sydney, but throughout New South Wales.