In 1797, report was brought to Sydney by shipwrecked mariners that, in traversing the coast, they had seen coal.

He at once set off to investigate.

At the place now called Coalcliff, about twenty miles south of Botany Bay, he found a vein of coal about twenty feet above the surface of the sea.

It was six or seven feet thick, and dipped to the southward until it became level with the sea, "and there the lowest rock you can see when the surf retires is all coal." It was a discovery of first-class importance--the first considerable find of a mineral that has yielded incalculable wealth to Australia.* (* It is well to remember that the use of coal was discovered in England in very much the same way.

Mr.Salzmann, English Industries of the Middle Ages, 1913 page 3, observes that "it is most probable that the first coal used was washed up by the sea, and such as could be quarried from the face of the cliffs where the seams were exposed by the action of the waves." He quotes a sixteenth century account relative to Durham: "As the tide comes in it bringeth a small wash sea coal, which is employed to the making of salt and the fuel of the poor fisher towns adjoining." Hence, originally, coal in England was commonly called sea-coal even when obtained inland.) He made this useful piece of investigation in August; and in the following month undertook a journey on foot, in company with Williamson, the acting commissary, from Sydney to the Cowpastures, crossing and re-crossing the River Nepean, and thence descending to the sea a few miles south of his old resting place, Watta-Mowlee.