The trees, now silicified and still upstanding, are believed to have been buried in volcanic ash erupted from a volcano somewhere east of the present day coastline.

The record is in his "An Australian Grammar: comprehending the principles and natural rules of the language, as spoken by the Aborigines in the vicinity of Hunter’s River, Lake Macquarie, &c., New South Wales" (Stephens & Stokes, Sydney, 1834, 131pp.).

This paper, "On a Fossil Pine Forest at Kurrur-Kurran, in the inlet of Awaaba [Lake Macquarie], East Coast of Australia" was communicated to London, the then centre of the English-speaking geological world.

Clarke sent two large sections of the silicified trees to England with his paper, and wrote in his covering note "I think you will not be displeased with this my first contribution from Australia".

At a time when evolution was not a terribly old or accepted theory, particularly within the religious fraternity, the Fennel Bay forest had a large impact on Reverend Clarke's mind, as he wrote the words "The train of thought which is excited by this scene is highly curious, and in few places in the world can the quiet and daily processes of natural growth and decay, the forms of living and dead things, and the successive changes and reproductions of matter, owing to the operations of most powerful though secretly evolving causes, be so prominently displayed, as in this singular picture of the past and the present".