80. the Federal Hotel promptly at 8.30, our breakfast being more or less thrown at us, as had all the other meals. to all diners, since the two waitresses both are also employed in the B-P store and have to rush there after serving meals, got our gear stowed on board and sailed pretty well on the dot of 9 A.M. George and Van managed to get to the hospital for a final examination of Van's eye, which is improving, and we looked over the ship. She is 700 tons, no Queen Mary, of course, but something that completely eclipses the Lochiel. She has passenger cabins for four people, two two-berth rooms, of which one is ours. The rest of us will sleep on the comfortable settees in the dining saloon. She has one, with a steward who wears a white coat, polishes the sil- ver and glass-ware, and says please and thank you. We are all delighted with the ship, both on account of her superiority over our past accommodations and also the superiority over those to come. We shall enjoy them to the tull. It is now 2 P.M., we passed the Tip of Cape York after sailing around the eastern side of Horn Island, not up the Normanby Pass, between Horn and Prince of Wales Islands, the way the L.C.I. brought us in, have travelled down past Somerset and seen in the distance Newcastle Bay, where we made our camp after leaving Lockerbie. Now we are crossing Jacky Jacky Inlet, the mouth of the Escape River is due south of us and we are heading in a SSE direction. A good and copious lunch has been consumed, which included such unheard of delicacies as crackers and cheese, iced water and table napkins. Capt. Dan Cleary is master of the ship and expects to disembark us at Portland Roads after breakfast tomorrow. Moreton, Willie and Roy are not certain that they like this part of the journey but they cannot do much about it now. I gave Moreton a part packet of cigarettes so he became more resigned. I think before closing this part of the entry, and thereby, this part of the expedition, I can put in a little more about Dr. Barnes and also the Federal Hotel. Barnes is a very young man, not yet out of his middle twenties, I should judge. He is the only doctor on T.I. and runs a small hospital there which, with the private practice he naturally must have, keeps him very busy. He was one of that small group of Australian troops who were cut off by the Japs on Timor but held out until the end of the war or when Timor was relieved. I have read how they managed to construct a radio and send word back as to their continued existence. Barnes did not complete his medical course until after he had left the army. The Federal Hotel is run and owned, I believe, by Kevin Kelleher, who does not like work very much and sent to Brisbane for his mother to come up and take charge. She is of Jewish extraction and the story is that the hotel is going downhill. How that can be done is hard to understand - one would say that it definitely is in a valley now. Mrs. Kelleher has had nine chil- dren, three of whom, including Kevin, went into the police force, but Kevin got out and somehow acquired the hotel. A waitress was sent for from Cairns but she received a better offer from another hotel in T.I. and after one look at the Federal, accepted the other. Consequently the B-P girls, who live there, are given free rent in return for their household services. George and Len have turned in for a while and Van and I are writing but I find myself yawning mostly. I think I shall lie down on the settee for a while and get a bit of a rest. We shall be about level with Pudding Pan Hill by dusk, well on our southward way, and tomorrow is another day of setting up camp, to say nothing of getting our stuff off the Alagna. Being out of reading matter, since all my who-dun-its are in one of the boxes in the cargo, I am reading this journal to see what strikes me as a possibility for short story material. So far I have not found much.