114

Crohamhurst Observatory,
[Beerwah],
Queensland.
27th march, 1939.

Director"
[Inigo Jones], F.R.A.S.,F.R.Met.Soc.,
M.Am.Met.Soc.

Mr. [F.J. Watson],
Grosvenor Street,
[Toowong].

Dear Sir,

I have your letter of 22nd instant asking for
information about the [Glass House Mountains] and shall write you
again later as I am trying to get hold of Mr. [John Grigor], Senior,
but he was first away and now his phone is out of order but I have
spoken by phone to Mr.[Burgess]. I myself remember the mountains
since 1891 but neither I nor Mr. [Burgess] can remember any such
peak as you describe and, if such a thing happened, the detritus
of such an immense fall would be easily recognisable even today.
Mr. [Burgess] says there was a big landslip off the lower part at
that time but not what you describe. Mr. [Grigor] may know
something about it but the mountain looks much as it did then
to me and I have made paintings of it on several occasions but
have no early photograph. I always understood that the name
referred to its inaccessability which was overcome after a bush
fire many years ago when a tree fell across a cleft and enabled
young [Macelson] to ascend it for the first time.

Your surmise is correct about my weather observations
but my father was of [Crohamhurst] not [Mellum]. I understand that
the name [Mellum] was a sort of corruption of Mellor after-wards
a [Gympie] miner who made a great deal of money there and who was
in the early eighties engaged getting cedar here and camped at
[Landsborough] which was first called Mellum but whether that is
the realy reason I could not be certain.

The name of [Beerwah] I have seen in part of the place
names published in the Courier as analogous to Burwha but I do
not think that is right as the blacks here always called the
mountain Berry way or bury way (that is what it sounded like) and
never [Beerwah]. [Crook Neck] was the mountain which made [Cook] give
them that name of glass house and he called it "The Glass House"
because of its resemblance ot a glass house or factory and you may
remember there was one at [Northgate] for many years and it had the