91. Tuesday, 15 June 1948. It is late afternoon and as I have nothing particular to do until supper time, I shall write some notes for today. They will have little to do with work because, although I have travel- ed several miles during the day, my results have been small and on the poor side. This afternoon I took one of the bikes and rode a couple of miles toward the Wunlock gold fields, meeting a truck bearing some of the miners on their way to Portland Roads, from whence they are going to Cairns for a holiday since one of them made a good strike and took out 100 ounces during the past week. That was probably a gross figure but was good enough to justify the holi- day. They are all interested in the expedition and one cannot talk for five minutes with any of these men before the subject turns to the taipan: probably I have already said something about it but I think I shall devote today's entry to that famous snake. First of all, there is no doubting the existence of the taipan and it has been given the status of a genus, Oxyuramus. There is no doubting, either, it's unpleasant characteristics. But every miner has a different description and has a different adventure to relate, nine tenths of which are most likely untrue. Gordon, the supreme bushman, says he has only seen three in all the years he has spent in the bush. Originally it was known as the Giant Brown snake until a man named McClelland came along and it received the name of McClelland's Brown snake. Today I was told that Mrs. Fisher, of Portland Roads, gave it the name it now bears. It is known in some places as the two-minute snake, in others, the five-minute snake. It is acknowledged that in its venomous properties, it ranks with the king cobra and the bushmaster. It grows to ten feet. But to hear the miners tell it, everywhere one looks, there is a taipan, and it is always twelve feet long, never less, apparently emerging from its egg fully grown. Charles Barrett, a better novelist than naturalist appar- ently, says it travels with its head held about three feet from the ground, a thing which I think would be impossible for a snake. All the miners' tales occurred to a friend of theirs, never to themselves. The thing I got at Lockerbie, which Ginger Dick assured me was the local taipan, was barely six feet long: George got another snake, also about six feet in length, which answers some of the description in the books, but is en- tirely different from the Lockerbie one. In general, we have come to believe that it is next thing to a myth and certainly is so rare that it is unlikely we shall ever see one. Another story, since we are on the subject of snakes, came to Van a few days ago, also from one of the miners. It was said that if a stick is held firmly across a death adder's back and suddenly released, the snake will jump "fully ten feet in the air". For an eighteen inch snake, that is quite a jump. Tomorrow is incoming-mail day and also is the day for the preparation of outgoing mail. I should like to finish off this page but cannot think of any more snake stories except that Jetty Joe says he saw in one day at the Lower Claudie, where we shall be going for a few days before long, three pythons, none of them less than nineteen feet in length. I did not ask him how he ascertained the total footage, but shall search assiduously when we reach that area. I think if I put it to Moreton on the basis of one cigarette for every foot over ten, that might bring results also. In the matter of Joe, it would not have surprised me a bit if he had seen some at T.I., judging by his shape when he boarded the Alagna. He is rendering "Songs of Araby" in the cook-house now which means I had better get ready for supper.