19. Burke, whose ship will take us up to Thursday Island. After that we went to call on Burns, Philp, Brisbane, and received some news that was not of the best. Our freight, which reached Brisbane on January 26th has only today been shipped; that explains Len's silence. No doubt he does not know even now when the stuff will reach Cairns but I learned from Mitchell, of B-P, about the steamer today. Further, the Wandana, Burke's ship, will not leave Brisbane until the 6th of March and Cairns about the 11th. Actually there will be no time lost as there will be space between the arrival of the freight and of the Wandana for us to do our repacking. Mitchell said he had been receiving very heated let- ters from Mr. Dupain, our Cairns (and B-P's) agent, no doubt inspired by Len. There is no sign of a let-up of the rail strike so I asked B-P to book passage for us by air to Cairns for Wednesday, which, I hope will be forthcoming. That also has prevented the shipment of our freight by rail. Tomorrow, after Spence has introduced us to Burke's, he is taking us to see C.T. White, the Government botanist under whom Len served,and then to lunch. Those will complete our business calls and if we leave on Wednesday, there will not be much time for anything more anyway. As a fitting ending to the day, which seemed somehow to be full of accomplishment though we did very little personally, we went to the movies and saw "Frieda", the picture I had hoped to see in Sydney yester- day. If we get away as I hope there will be a gap of about ten days be- fore the freight comes in. Most likely George and Van may do a bit of local collecting; I shall have to meet the bank people and do various business odds and ends, and anyway my collecting gear is with the freight whereas both George and Van have some with them. From the point of view of economy it will be advisable for us to get away as soon as possible. Our Sydney expenses were higher than elsewhere as we had some entertain- ing to do, but it will pay us in the long run. Tuesday, 24 February 1948. The ship "Time" which was to leave with our freight yesterday evening was reported this morning as delayed again on account of a seaman falling into the river and being drowned. The ship incidentally was carrying fifty tons of flour to a small town, Mackay, which was one of her stops. There is starvation in Mackay and this morning's paper, in addition to reporting the delay of the Time, announced that there was now no bread at all in Mackay. It is still morning. Van has been out to register with the Queens- land police and I am awaiting a call from Mitchell, of Burns Philp. We had a very restful night in our air-conditioned room and enjoyed the privacy of our bath to the full. Spence is to call for us with the Lumley & Co. car at 10.30 and I hope by that time the call will have come in from Mitchell, Apart from holding up Spence, I want to know if we have the reservations for tomorrow's plane to Cairns. Mitchell telephoned at 10 AM to say that they have two seats on the 2.30 plane tomorrow, due Cairns 9.25 PM. Wired Len as follows: Dupain, Burphil, Cairns. Please inform Brass quote Due Cairns airport 2125 Wednesday arrange ac- commodation two. Geoffrey Tate.