CHAPTER XXIII.
A GEOGRAPHICAL SKETCH AND TABULAR VIEW OF EASTERN AUSTRALIA.
NEW SOUTH WALES and the new province of Victoria have so recently been divided, and are geographically so completely united, that it is difficult to describe the principal rivers or mountains of the one without referring to the other. The reader must therefore study the colonial divisions of Eastern Australia with a map.
Sir Thomas Mitchell, as Surveyor-General, was in 1827 entrusted with the task of surveying and dividing that district into counties, and the laying out of towns, roads, and reserves for public purposes. In this work, now complete, he has been zealously engaged for twenty-six years. He has cut all the passes that lead through mountains to the interior country, planned two hundred towns and villages, and reported (without success) in favour of several roads and public works, which would have conferred the utmost benefit on the colony.
The following sketch is taken by permission of the author from a manual of Australasian Geography, prepared by Sir Thomas Mitchell for the use of colonial schools.
New South Wales is divided into sixty-seven counties -- formerly into ninety -- but twenty-three have been cut off by the act which erected Australia Felix, under the name of Victoria, into a separate colony.
"The nineteen counties," frequently referred to in colonial documents, are those which were first proclaimed by "Letters Patent." The principal rivers falling to the eastern coast are the Shoalhaven (on which the township of Braidwood stands), the Hawkesbury (on which there are the townships of Penrith, Castlereagh, Richmond, Windsor, and Pitt Town, all in the county of Cumberland, and Emu and Wilberforce, in the county of Cook), and the Hunter. The Hunter receives from the south the waters of the River Wollombi; from the north the rivers Page, Paterson, and Williams; its most western source is the Goulburn. The following townships are on the northern tributaries of the Hunter: Muscle Brook, on the northern branch of the Hunter; Murrumndi, on the Page; Dulwich, on Glendon Brook; Paterson, on the navigable branch of that name; and Clarence Town, at the head of the navigation of the William.
