Thursday, 29 April 1948. Today was something of a disappointment; we were informed last night that a boat was due in from T.I. this afternoon, would bring the mail, wait the night and take mail out for posting at T.I. tomorrow. All hands wrote madly this morning and Ginger Dick drove me over to R.I.P. this afternoon but no ship came in. Our mail was left there with a half-caste who will be going over when some form of ship really does arrive. I made up my order on Burns Philp for our next lot of supplies, which are to be shipped from Cairns to Portland Roads about the middle of next month, and had hoped to have a reply to a letter sent to the T.I. manager of B.P. about some other stuff. My letter will go by the half-caste but I don't know when I shall hear from the T.I. man. Even should the ship come in tomorrow, we shall not know it until somebody has occasion to ride over to Lockerbie. Apart from the rushing around caused by this false alarm, there is little to report tonight. Some of us may go over to the Holland house to listen to the radio news; we were informed last night that the world was on the verge of war again. Friday, 30 April 1948. This is George's birthday and the only present I can give him is a little tin of G. Washington coffee. It is not much but it is my most prized possession at the moment. I give it con- fident that I shall get at least a cup from it. Maybe somebody will send me some more anyway. He was duly appreciative but to my dismay went off to the cook-house after running his trap-line and had a cup by himself. We took a large goanna, an iguana-like creature, about five feet long in the morning and I spent the rest of the time until lunch getting the skin off. The afternoon was unproductive but I got some stuff in the evening and have just returned with Len from listening to the nine o'clock news at the Holland house. Yesterday at R.I.P. I picked up some somewhat disturbing news to the ef- fect that our Bob McDonald is the leader or main thief of a band of abbo sneak- thieves. When we are nearer to some place with a shop or a grog dump, we shall have to use padlocks profusely. Another thing I learned was that the abbos have been deprived of their war spears and forbidden to make more because of the frequency with which they punctured each other during corroborees. Also they are forbidden to have rifles and only a 12 gauge shot-gun can legally be owned and used by them to procure their food. They are allowed the use of fish-spears, many-pronged affairs which would puncture about four times as secretly as a war spear, and of course many of them were in the Army and have managed to carry their rifles with them. We all seem to be rather tired this evening - it has been a hot day and I think salt tablets will be on the dinner table from now on. I have never had occasion to use them but they pep one up and do a job of reviving in case of heat fatigue, from which we are all probably suffering. Saturday, 1 May 1948. Ginger Dick and young Dick told me this morning they were taking the truck out to get a bullock and suggested that I go along. I did and some time out of camp we came across George who joined the party. George and I hunted around while the two Dicks rounded up and shot their animal. It was quartered and we all drove back to camp but George and I had not had much success in our efforts. On our return we found that two of the boys had quit their jobs, the rea-