If the trip is well away from the mountains though much low swampy pond, traversed by frequent creeks, at least one of which is tidal. The vegetation is well eucalypt scrub - layer at streams. The cloud belt today start at about 2500 feet & showers fell at Mt. Speight about 1 pm. They've had much cloudy weather & one rain lately. The trail winds up & in some forests the much finer forest - trop pine, silky oak, she-oaks. At 1000 feet it crosses Crystal Creek falls (photo). A certain amount of logging is going on at high levels. He is a small community with a post office & one store. The P.O. is called Paluma. Saw a live chigo in road ahead of the bus in the lowlands. He stood trip on his toes with tail well up & only moved a little out of our way as we passed. Dorsetial rain later. Leeches, pink-purple, abundant; also a small blackish one. Mon. Feb. 23 Heavy rain during night. Quite a number of Rettina arnoldi in the area, including worms and post-feeding females. Two or three partly eaten (putrps by daugures or ferel cats.) One last trap in creek bed taken away. Mr. Cawil, who runs the Guest House, has been a poacher hunter. They used to make their baits of "pollard" (softest) with additions of oils of anise and eucalyptus & just cyanide in it. The baits were put on the ground. He says water rats and a large rat with white tail tip (possibly Uromys) occurs. There is a skin of Dasymus gracilis in the p. office. Cawil has a photo of another he killed in his chicken house. They call it "tija cat". Also at the p.o. is a skin of a baby platypus & a half from live Trichosurus, yellow-belly Bennett, with ears rather pale. The found is good vine scrub full of lawyer cans & on hillside which for the most part are very steep. The rock is graniteoid. There is a little place the stream in its creeks. Drainage is virtually all western (Little Baskett tributaries). Storms during the morning. Everything very damp & musty. (Report: no rain in Townsville). Cawil says this fern scrub extends only a dozen miles to the south and, four miles or so inland, changes back to