Wednesday, 2 June 1948. As today has been without any special event, I think I shall try to tell something about the Fisher family They are our hosts or agents, as the case may be, in this area, and Fisher him- sell is the nearest to a Somerset Maugham character I have come across yet. Fisher is the postmaster of Portland Roads post office, which was opened on the first of May this year. The office serves a nomad population of about twenty persons, scattered over an area of some hundreds of square miles. At Iron Range, our next camp, there are three people living and the remaining eighteen appear from the bush at various times. All of them are miners and prospectors. He, Fisher, probably is an Englishman and served in the first war in the Royal Flying Corps, a very swagger outfit which preceded the Royal Air Force. In addition to the postmaster job, he conducts a small store but rarely has anything in it for sale. Ever since we have been here, one or more of us has gone over to his place to listen to the 9 P.M. news and he always turns out a bottle of port, a comfortable and civilized habit. Mrs. Fisher was a widow when Fisher met and married her. She had one son, Barrie, then, and since her second marriage there have been two more children, girls. She is a solid woman, redhaired, and usually wears a cartridge belt and carries a cut-down .410 shot gun. They have both been very nice to us but it is amusing to hear their conversation. Doug has a very quiet, cultured voice, and Mrs. Usually starts her statement with "Christ". She is said to have in- erited several gold mines, none of them being in operation, from her father, and she and Doug seem very happy together. Portland Roads, as with all the places, large or small along this coast, had a small garrison during the war, and the place is littered with abandoned army huts. We have taken over one of the less dilapidated ones and, even with its leaks, it is more commodious than anything we could contrive with canvas and Joe has a stove on which to cook his meals. The Fishers live in another similar hut. The weekly plane, which provides the sole means for receiving and sending mail, travels northbound to Thursday Island on Wednesdays and southbound, back to Cairns, tomorrow. We received very little mail this evening, mine being limited to one letter from the Bank of New South Wales, but we have been in- formed by the postmaster that a bag of mail went on to T.I. by mistake, and will reach us tomorrow. I am sending mail out for us all tonight, which Doug takes to Iron Range early tomorrow. We are all hoping to have some more inter- esting mail tomorrow when the errant bag returns, than we had today. Thursday, 3 June 1948. Again the day has been much the same as any other except that George and Len went up to Iron Range to spy out the land. We shall move on Saturday or Sunday and shall have headquarters there for about three weeks, making subsidiary camps as we did at Lockerbie. George pronounces the area as promising. One of our sub. stations will be on the lower Claudie River and another probably north of Iron Range. further From there we move/inland to the northern slope of Mt. Tozer and after that, the time unspecified at present, we shall move still further west in the general direction of Coen, perhaps making a short camp at Wenlock mines which are at the headwaters of the Wenlock or Batavia River, not at the mouth as I originally thought. I have not said anything about the part which was going on on the jetty when we arrived. Wandana had stopped there northbound the day before and it is the custom of the miners to gather there on Wandana day and have a party. Wan-