130. the day lying down he seems a bit better now and has been able to eat and retain a little food. tomorrow morning will be pretty hectic, closing this camp and getting the horses loaded and everything back to the Peach so I hope the recovery is permanent. I think I have not given a very clear picture of this camp at all. We are about three hours ride from the edge of the scrub, the western side, that is, and therefore deep in the forest. During our passage of this forest we passed the top of the dividing range and started down the eastern fall. Our camp is in a little clear glade but the forest wall is thick in every direction. A lot of it is small stuff but here and there huge trees rear themselves up. The little stream, rushing around and over the boulders in its bed, is only about twenty yards downhill from camp and we have cut and worn a trail down to the washing place. Narrow trails have also been cut in various directions as we have gone about our business but they will be gone in a few weeks after we have. The only really clear place, so far as forest is concerned, is the stream bed which forms a narrow cleft in the dense vegetation. Along the stream there are lots of the largest trees, many of them rotted at the roots and leaning upon one another, sometimes spanning the stream itself as the roots have given away and the trunk has fallen until brought up against an equally large tree on the opposite side of the river. Birds are fairly plentiful, to judge by their calls; though hard to see but only in a few places, occasionally in our camp clearing but mainly on the occasional rock outcrops along the river bed, where the sun can beat down, do the butterflies, dragon-flies and a few other insects appear. They are indeed few. Reptiles, snakes particularly, seem non-existent save for a very tiny lizard and the goannas; if they had not been taken in the traps and brought in in that way, I should have doubted their existence also. In mammals only small things have been taken though a fairly good harvest of them; of course I do not yet know how George and Van are doing in the new camp at Camp-Oven Pocket, but we shall pass them on our way out tomorrow and I shall hear then. Sunday, 22 August 1943. This is being written back at the Peach Camp, where we arrived somewhat tired. Len had another bad night and evidently has a touch of flu'. He is off his feed but seems to be improving fairly well and should be quite fit by the time we leave. The journey down was without event and I had the horse I had before, still with its reluctance to go down steep gullies. It stopped and turned its head questioningly every time we came to one and then, finally realising that it might just as well do it without any further bother, went down like a whirlwind and practically bounced up the other side. We reached Camp-Oven Pocket about 4 P.M. and stopped for a few minutes for a talk and a cup of tea with George and Van. I do not think they are getting great quantities but are making some records, furthest north this thin was ever found and so on. They presented me with a large black python, I think it is; Roy found it under a rock and stunned it with a stone and I am not sure whether it is dead or alive. I am not going to find out tonight either but shall just leave it in its sack until I can see all about it in the morning. Joe and Don gave us a hearty welcome and it was good to eat somebody else's cooking for a change. I really am not in Joe's class at all - he can turn out such things as stewed fruit whereas I did not have enough cooking utensils, nor the fruit, to do that; he also makes a confection he calls rice-custard which requires rice and dried milk, neither of which I had. Well, we didn't starve anyway.