123. The trail led back along the road to the Archer River for about five miles and was in good condition. It was during that part of the journey that I found the driver had brought hit girl friend along with him. She is English, from Oxfordshire, and what she is doing around these parts is none of my business. I think we can let her drop; she leaves for Thursday Is- land on Wednesday and doubtless will find another driver there. After the five miles was over, we turned from the trail and started across country. The road the boy followed was the remains of a single horse trail; every hundred yards or so, we would all have to dismount to pull away logs that had fallen, fill in gullies that had developed and so on. Joe was by this time in a mumbling sort of coma, so we knew he was still living but did not care very much. He took a fearful beating -- with every lurch of the truck either he was banged against something or something fell on him. I saw a four gallon drum of jerosene fall on him and his shoes came off. By the time darkness came on we were still some miles away from water and that varried in the truck was not sufficient for our party which numbered our own group of nine, the driver and his gal, and the guide. The horse-boy had left us to round up his horses. We continued, cutting our way in the light im of the truck headlights, stumbling, cursing, falling over each other, smacking each other with axes, fortunately not hard enough to draw any blood, and eventually, about 3.30, by the light of the stars and a new moon, found our way to a thin stream of water, the south branch of the Peach, which shows on some maps as Falls Creek, on others as Horne Creek and yet on others simply as a dotted line. There we made camp, shook Joe into a state of consciousness sufficient for him to boil some tea, and then went into a coma ourselves. Before closing, I must record that it was old Joe Fisher who dun it. The gaso- line however did not belong to the air lines and was the property of Joe Keppel, an old friend of Joe Fisher. Joe Keppel had bought and imported it quite formally and properly. On being interrogated and informed that it was not the air lines property, Joe Fisher admitted immediately that he had stolen it. "Joe Keppel, he's a friend of mine for years. I wouldn't thieve a shilling from him. I'll return it at once." Which he did. Case dismissed. Tuesday, 10 August 1948. This has been something of a replica of yesterday, minus the unknown quantities and with the hard work redoubled. To bring it to date quickly, we reached and now are camped on Peach River or Creek, as the case may be. We all walked the total distance because at no time would anybody have been able to just sit on the truck without being instantly shot by his mates. The final episode was a job of readmaking, far from the first but definite- ly the worst. There was a gully about twenty feet or more in depth, but the road on the opposite bank hardly existed. Smoothing the road down to the bed of the gully was easy, and getting the truck there was correspondingly so, but the job of getting it up on the other side was quite a different story. It ended with out cutting a diagonal road up the opposite side, hacking and scooping the earth away from the inside and piling it on the outside of the channel we creat- ed. And, with that, we got here and are now camped on the banks of the Peach. Who was here last is uncertain -- Dr. Logan Jack wrote of his visit here in '89, and doubtless some others have been here since then. There is a story of a crush- ing battery being moved over here across the top of the divide, to work the one produced by miners in this vicinity. The battery site is a little downstream from us, But certainly it is many years since anybody was here. A propos, Don wondered if the presence of a battery meant that the artillery had been in. George and Len tomorrow are taking a couple of horses and will try to get across the Divide into the Rocky Scrub. And that brings me to the horses. The