Later. While I was unpacking and checking the supplies, there was another reorganization which, in this case, meant that everybody selected what they needed from the equipment shipped up from Cairns and dumped the rest on top of my bed or my box or something that was mine. I am supposed to pack this residue and have already been told how much more we ordered than was needed - but all the other chaps made up the lists, not me. The weather is much like that at Newcastle Bay - a fairly clear morning, the early part of it, followed by clouds, heavy gusts of wind and squalls of rain. I think collecting is not too good but have been so tied to the store job that I have had little opportunity even to know what the others have done, let alone do anything myself. This is our second night here at Portland Roads and I have managed to listen to the 9 o'clock news each night. Most of it is concerned with a general referendum recently taken here to determine whether federal control of prices is to be maintained here in Australia or not. The majority was fairly crushing in favor of not. It is so odd that hardly any country that I know anything about has any faith whatever in the government it has elected for itself. It is a profound thought, one that I can well go to bed on. Tuesday, 1 June 1943. Mrs. Fisher and one of the abbo women went out yesterday and Mrs. F. told me that Ada, the colored woman, wanted to know how long those government men, meaning us, would be staying. She wanted also to know if we would be going up Black Mountain, a resort of "quinken". Mrs. F. asked if Ada would go but she said "No. Big wind him come. Blow off all black woman's clothes." Evidently after modesty has been ravished by the wind, the quinken come in and do the rest. Her father is one of those abbos who have caught the quinken, the little hairy men, alive. He, and all the other abbos who have ever caught a quinken, is dead, though. It is still a little before supper time, about 5.30, but as I am going out with a light this evening and want to get back in time to listen to the nine o'clock news at Fisher's, I think I shall get this written up now. This morning I still had not finished with the repacking but decided to go out for an hour or so before I started on that work. Climbed by a roundabout means to an abandoned radar station on a hill behind camp, from which I could properly get my bearings for the first time since our arrival at Portland Roads. There is a variety of country and that on the hill is the worst kind of all. Long rank grass, waist high, prevents one's seeing one's feet at all, and conceals the loose stones which slide under one's steps and causes severe spills. That hill and its radar station (all these little ports along the east coast had small garrisons during the war and are dotted with army huts, some occupied by abbos and the rest completely decayed) are to the south of us. To the east, of course, is the ocean, and north, in which direction I went this afternoon, the concave shore of Weymouth Bay sweeps in and is gringed by mangrove swamps. Westward the dirt road to Iron Range, our next camp, runs through what seems to be forest country, as far as I could see this morning, the road showing like a red band where it comes into view over the ridges. I have a snake, several lizards and a turtle in the way of reptiles and of course lots of varied bugs but none of these coastwise areas seem to be particularly good either for me or for the mammal men. I think we shall not remain here much past the end of the week, and I think also that the further inland we get, the better the hunting will be. And by the time we finish with the Iron Range camp, we can consider the trip as being somewhere about half finished. From Iron Range I think we shall go further inland, to Coen, then gradually south to Annie River, if we decide to come out that way.