115. Sunday, 25 July 1948. When we woke this morning, all hands felt that a few more hours could have easily been used. However, it has been just another day for us, except for an invitation to another house for afternoon tea, consisting of tea, scones & butter, five kinds of cake and two kinds of pie. The morning I spent in fixing up the few things that had come to my light trap last night and a general survey of the country from the top of one of the mine derricks. From every point of view it is poor. Not only has game of all sorts been scared away by the activity of the mines, each with a tall derrick and steam engines operating all over the place, but in addition to that the whole district for miles around in every direction has been burned and still is burning. I went to a semi-circular hill to the east of us, climbed it and travelled along its crest to the other end. In every direction I could see the smoke of forest fires in the distance and on the hill itself, very recently fired, logs were still smouldering and smoking. Tomorrow Don Vernon and I are crossing the Batavia River and visiting a lagoon on the south side in the hope of getting some fresh-water crocodiles. So far, with the exception of one at Red Island Point, there have been no crocs in our lives at all. It might be a good idea to keep things that way but one has to look, if only to find out what places to avoid. When we shall leave here is a moot point and depends on when Hughie Fisher can get his truck into movable shape. In general we are anxious to get along into Coen and out again before the crowds begin to gather for the races. I had a letter today from Walter Rose, postmaster of Coen, telling me they would be honored to have us there, which was nice of Walter but would not help us to get our work done. Monday, 26 July 1948. An uneventful day, so far as I am concerned. I went over to the lagoon, Don returning after having shot a bird; it consisted actually of three lagoons and nothing in any one of them. I circled them all and the only tracks I could see in the mud were those of pigs. In the afternoon I started out intending to wander up and down the Batavia River bed but was buttonholed en route by one of the miners named Scotty MacDonald. During the party a couple of nights ago we had exchanged reminiscences together and I learned that he had for a while worked in the ship-building firm of Cammel-Laird in Birkenhead, at about the time I enlisted in the Cheshire Regiment in the first war. Later he had visited New York and today he showed me one of his most prized mementos - a theatre ticket stub for E. F. Keith's Orpheum Theatre in Brooklyn, dated May 21, 1917. Anyway Scotty decided to take me over where there were some trap-door spiders. We found the place and found also four of the trap doors and tunnels but no spiders. The area had been burnt over since he was there last. I took my heavy rifle out this morning in my crocodile hunt and ended up by bringing back one of the smallest mice I have ever seen. It was hiding under some wood I was turning while looking for reptiles, and is a most valuable addition to the collection, being the first of its kind we have taken and the first of its kind known north of a place some hundreds of miles south of here. I did not shoot it, of course, it being hardly bigger than the shell of my .303. I caught it with the butterfly net. Tuesday, 27 July 1948. The morning was not very productive; I cut across to the Batavia River, got into its channel, mainly dry sand now, with a shallow stream about twenty feet wide, and travelled