Thursday, 11 March 1948. The white of this paper is attracting myriads of bugs of all degree, mostly low. Ven and I got away from Cairns at 7.55, reaching Mossman at about 11 A.M. Harold Lane met us and drove us up to the power station, where we are settled for a period of a week to ten days, all depending on the strike and the Time. The power station has a caretaker, an oldtime bush man from the Daintree section, where a river, Cobb River, was named after him. The name, naturally, is Cobb, Jim Cobb. Our camp, pitched in a clearing planted with paw paw and bananas, consists of one tent for our sleeping accomodation. We do our work in a sort of out-house, attached to the station, which is a corrugated iron shed housing the machines which supply Mossman with its light and electrical power. It was noon when we reached the station and after Lane left, we whipped together a lunch of bully, bread and tea. I had brought in our rations some lemon crystals and Van contrived a sweet lemon drink, not too unpalatable. Just before going to bed I shall try some of it laced with rum. The rum should certainly improve the lemon and I can merely hope for the vice cersa. In the afternoon we went up to the intake of water, which moves the tur- bines and set a line of traps there, also catching one or two various other things and after that returned, very hot and sweaty, for a most delightful swim in the river, a pleasure which we shall not, unfortunately, be able to allow ourselves in the rivers further north, unless they too are rapid and bouldery and inaccessible for crocs. Gil Bates, who had been working on the cane fields, came up for a few minutes in the evening with Arthur Taylor (see last Sunday's notes, I think) and a couple of abbo field hands. They brought us a well-sized brown snake and had found the remains of a taipan, measuring about seven feet, which had been run over by trucks until it was too mutilated to have any value. Sic sempcr taipanus. For the present our meals come out of cans and supper consisted of can- ned beef stew and peas, on toast, followed by pineapple jam, taken by the spoon from the can. I have hung our larder from a high cross piece so it will be safe from ants and at the moment I am waiting for some water to heat so we can do the washing up. Lane comes up here about 8 every evening for his final inspection and after his departure we shall take our fine side-shooting gun and torches and see what we can find. The field hands who came up with Gil have promised us a platypus; they are rare this far north and would be very welcome additions to the collection, but if only we had our own equipment we really could do some good work. About the worst thing in this part of the scrub, taipans, brown snakes and shatnot included, is the stinging tree, or nettle tree. It inflicts, mere- ly if one brushes up against it, a most painful and lasting irritation and rash and has been known to put men hors de combat for weeks. Fortunately it is distinctive and cannot be missed by daylight. Five hundred cigarettes, marked "botanical samples", came in from Spence, in Brisbane, last night. I split with Len and we mutually blessed Spence and praised his name. Friday, 12 March 1948. Last night we went out jack-lighting and did not get even one pair of eyes. Can got two specimens, both rats, in the line traps he wet when he went out to collect and re-bait them this