18. Monday, 23 February 1948. Before shifting our locale to Brisbane, I shall add a little more about Sydney. Yesterday afternoon we separated forces, Van going to the Botanical Gardens whilt I took a turn at the Museum: I found it to be fairly complete so far as Ethnology foes but woefully lacking and incredibly poorly arranged in other sections. Even in ethnology one would find Egyptian and Peruvian relics stuck in the Australian aboriginal room. After leaving the Museum I listened for a while to the band in Hyde Park, visited the Ansac Memorial, which impressed me much more than did the other people inside it, and wandered back to the hotel. There is a complete closeUp on Sunday, even movies being shut, which is too bad. There is a picture "Frieda" which I would like to have seen but it may be in Brisbane. Prices of foodstuffs are considerably lower than in the U.S. but in other things, notably, shoes, they seem at least as high as in New York. Al- most all the shops are advertising for help and the people we have in con- versation with all unite in damning the current Labor government and say that even with a greater population, there is no hope under the present regime. The heat this afternoon was stifling but the fact that there is an over- hang from the shops along the main streets gives one some shelter both from rain and sun. I find the accents of the people somewhat odd; there is definitely an English pronunciation but the voices are shrill and nasal. Other oddities are no butter on Sundays for lunch and the fact that almost all the news- papers are of the tabloid variety. We had a very pleasant evening with Robin and Mrs. Speight who are not only extremely nice people, but may also be of considerable help to us when the time for departure comes. Swift & Company are of course very big ship- ers and have considerable influence with the steamship companies and I think if we need it we shall have Speight's assistance. Now for Brisbane. We checked out of the hotel about 10.15 after I made a call on old man Creighton-Brown, of Lumleu & Co. Everything went smoothly and there was little excitement about the air passage even though it was the first time I had flown. To me it is just another mechanical method of trans- portation about which I know nothing and therefore do not worry. There were one or two bumps but nothing alarming and a heavy bank of cloud obscured a lot of the scenery. We followed the coastline pretty closely all the way. I was mildly tickled to arrive at the Lennon Hotel at exactly the minute and day that I had mentioned when I wrote them from New York on January 16th, and was extremely pleased with the hotel itself. It was Mac- Arthur's headquarters during the war and a great many of the American features have been retained. We share a room but have a private bath and shower and do not have a quarter of a mile of passage to walk [illegible] along whenever we wish to go. Also the place is air-conditioned throughout and it has a pleasant cocktail lounge. It may be the latter or any of the other pleasant things that has put me in a beneficent mood but I immediately liked Brisbane just as I immediately disliked Sydney. We lunched on the plane so as soon as we were settled in and had sent clothing for pressing and shirts for laundering, we went out to make some calls. First on Mr. Spence, who is & Creighton-Brown's Brisbane agent and very nice to deal with. He is taking us calling on the shippers, John