Thompson's blacks with some extra horses to make up for the one that got away and for the one we were short anyway. The horse furniture is not complete, however, and we now have three surcingles between five pack animals. At the time of writing the horse-boy has not come back from his trip up with George and Don yesterday. When he arrives, there should be some kind of note to tell of their travels and final camp but it should not have anything to do with our move particularly and our stay up there will be about a week, in duration. Beds probably will have to be constructed from leaves, as we did at Tozer and no doubt even my skimp little camp cot will feel palatial when I get back. It does not particularly bother me but tomorrow will be the first time I have been on a horse for twenty years or more. I expect to feel considerably more bothered about this time tomorrow. I had better close up now and get my stuff weighed; the loads for the horses are slung half on each side and have to balance each other. Saturday, 14 August 1943. Between the short cut that Len, Roy and I cut and the trail which George and Willie cleared, we made the trip up to the Scrub in just five hours; we had expected that we might be compelled to camp overnight along the trail and it was a pleasant surprise to do everything so quickly. All the horses were quiet and probably had not recovered or recuperated from their efforts of yesterday. I had a young animal with a constitutional dislike for going down hill. Our road was full of steep gullies and my steed would stop and look appealingly at me. Van's horse was even funnier - it would not get mine out of its sight at all. On a couple of occasions Van lost his hat which was snatched off by the prongs of low lawyer cane and I had to halt before his horse would stop and let him retrieve the hat. George and Don were somewhat surprised to see us so soon but they had rigged a good camp, only about twenty yards from a rapid little river. There is considerable doubt about all this part of the country in nomenclature but a prospector named Lakeland is said to have been here about forty years ago and named the creek after his daughter, Claudia; not far away is another called after his son, Leo, so we describe the camp as Upper Nesbit River, Claudia Creek. It is in thick scrub and the camp site has been cut in the forest. George's collection so far, one night, has been good, and we shall all have to be busy as about a week is our limit for here. I shall write concerning my own results tomorrow. The horse-boy went back this afternoon and should easily get to camp by nightfall. Len may come up tomorrow but in my opinion it would be well to rest the horses for a day. Moreton seems to have a touch of 'flu and may not come up at all. By the way, he refers to the horse-boy as "the old man", a title of great respect. Moreton himself is an "old man" but this one seems to be his tribal senior. Sunday, 15 August 1943. The above "old man" failed to get his convoy safely back to the Peach. His horses, or one of them, bumped into a hornets nest and one of the horses galloped away, shedding its load, empty saddle bags, as it went. Hornets seem very abundant about here and, having gone this far without a twinge, I ran into two of them within the past week. One was during our road-making trip out to the Peach and the other when we were cutting the short cut out to here. On the second I took revenge, putting a load of shot through it from a safe distance and thereby removing the occupants from this vale of tears.