96. Wednesday, 23 June 1948. The main purpose of my trip to the airport and the Lower Claudie River, to get a crocodile, failed completely, with not even a view of nor a shot at one of them. Leo and I went around together this morning, ending up at a place where, a few months ago, a man was nearly taken by one of them and would have been bur for his dog. The bank of the river is high at that spot and the river itself divides, forming an island much lower than the bank itself. The man was seen by onlook- ers from the high bank, gathering bait on the shore of the island and standing about thigh deep in the water. The dog was lying on the sand of the island bank. The onlookers, about two hundred yards away from him, could see the croco- dile swim up the river and pass the man who had not seen it. Then they saw the reptile turn in the water and make directly for the man. Finally they saw the dog, evidently sensing his master's danger, rise from the place where he was lying and leap into the river, landing directly on the back of the creature. One snap of the huge jaws and the dog was gone but the man was warned in time to scramble back to the shore. On some of the sand banks in the river at that part we hoped to see one of them but nothing appeared, neither was general collecting particularly good for me though Van's improved. Last night, after Van and I returned from jacking, Leo was still up and produced a bottle of claret from his refrigerator, together with wome sweet biscuits. It was a very nice going-to-bed snack though Leo's digestion, which abhrs iced water but likes iced claret, is convenient if nothing more. The big event of the day was the arrival of the plane with the mail and the stewardess, probably a very ordinary looking girl on Fifth Avenue, seemed quite a goddess in that bare waste. "Look" said Van "a white woman". "Yes" said "and wearing shoes". We gaped for a while and I could not fail to notice that nothing would persuade her to get out of the plane. Possibly the carcass of an eleven foot carpet snake, killed some days before by Leo, deceptitated this day for the Museum by me, and a perfectly harmless skeleton, deterred her somewhat. Possibly it was just Leo, Van and me. We sorted the mail and then Barrie took me back to camp in his truck, leaving Van to get another night of trapping in. Since my arrival back, and it seems as though I have been away for a long time, I have been hard at work on mail and the payment of bills, etc. There seems always something to be done in the way of business but of course particularly so on mail day. I don't yet know what arrangements can be made about in and out mail during the Tozer and Brown's Creek camps but doubtless something will be fixed up. Thursday, 24 June 1948. It has been decided that we move to Tozer Gap on Sun- day instead of Monday, a day forward, so this day and tomorrow are being and will be spent in packing specimens for shipment down to Cairns. From the pilot of the plane we learned that the Wandana is a week late but so long as we get our stuff down to the jetty we have nothing more to worry about. George and Len have selected tentatively a camp site for the main Tozer camp, just off the wagon trail to Wenlock, but are not decided. From there we shall have to manhandle our stuff up to the mountain camp, one or two of them as the case may be. It is a pity but I have to stop our supply of fresh meat since there will be no way of getting it from the airport to us and in this temperature it will quickly become tainted. I think in the matter of mail, I shall write what I can before we leave here and ask Barrie to get it to the plane somehow.