Thursday, 16 September 1948. Joe's feelings definitely were hurt last night over my preparing the supply order without con- sulting him but he knows he is very deep in the dog house now and this fortunate in being allowed to finish the trip. There was a bit of a rush this morning in getting George and Van, with their boys, away, and at the same time getting the mail out, the orders and letters written and so on, before 8 A.M. Joe is about the worst of his kind that I have ever struck; I have heard of men who drink embalming fluid, metholated spirits and so on but he is the first I have met. He is a man of good appearance and a considerable cuoture when he is sober; he has had a good musical education, once upon a time had a passable voice and, Len thinks, must have appeared on the stage somewhere. Certainly he gives that impression. But this weakness is too great and he would sell us or anybody else out for a bottle of grog. He seems to feel some sort of loyalty to us but it is not great enough to help him very much. After George and Van had departed I wrapped up those of my specimens which were ready and then worked out a tabulation which will have to be presented in order for us to receive our license to ship the things out. In the afternoon I took my laundry and myself to my favorite bathing spot and enjoyed myself tho- roughly. The operation of bathing is known to the bushmen as bogeying and the swimming pool as a bogey hole. With the end of the trip so near and the specimens in my departments so rare, it is hard to whip up enough enthusiasm to get on with the collecting. One feels unsettled, somehow, and the things of the future loom up so much more clearly and heavily - how to get down to Sydney, how to get the freight there in time to catch the ship, the final settlements with banks, B-P, the other business houses and so on, the dismissal and shipment back of the boys, Joe's pay-off. They are all immi- ment and will take time; I should like somehow to be able to start on them now but of course cannot do so until our return to Cooktown. George and Van have broken away and we shall not see them again until Cooktown, with the expedition over; they will work like mad but must have the feeling at the moment that they are more or less free-lancing. Don could not get himself to get on with his bird-skinning tonight; Len said that had it been Saturday he would have taken the afternoon off; I went out with a light but found nothing but spiders. The end is in the air now. Friday, 17 September 1948. This morning I got the second specimen of a transparent winged butterfly; they have been taken nowhere else but here (by me, I mean) but I very much doubt if it is the thing that Comstock asked me particularly to look out for. That one feeds on the larva of the green ant, I think, but while it has been reported from Cooktown, all the reports are of November and December. In the afternoon I managed to have my hunting trip take me up to my usual bathing place and thoroughly enjoyed my swim, though it was cold. It was last night also and I woke shivering about 4 A.M. this morning. Other than the above there is little to write about tonight except that, also this morning, I got a blue and black dragonfly which has eluded me f ever since we arrived here. This time I found him away from his usual habitat, a pool; at the pools he has easily dodged me, darting across the water easily and darting back again after I had painfully worked my way around three quarters of the pool after him. This morning he was in the bush and I was as much at home as he was; now he reposes in a neat little glassine envelope. Marie speaks of going out next Tuesday and Don and I think of going out with her as far as Helenvale in order to get a new locality. Jack Roberts will take her as far as Cooktown and could pick us up on his way back, giving us about three hours to collect there.