36. In view of the fact that by no means whatever can we get at the freight until next Tuesday, it seems the most sensible thing to let the stuff remain in the ship, to me. Crew trouble may delay that, of course, but there will be no additional costs. In the case of rail, the delay may be just as long and we will be saddled with extra costs. In the case of road, we do not yet know that we can get the stuff from the ship at Townsville anyway, and the tracking costs would be extortionate. In the meantime, we shall make a camp for four or five days over the East- er period at a place called Speewah, on the Clohesy River, northwest of here. We shall all be there and in addition Ernie Stevens and his brother may be with us for part of the time, if not all. I have to quit this and start on a food & equipment list, the equipment being the harder. I must avoid as much as possible purchasing stuff that is included in our freight, yet I must have adequate cooking and lighting means. Len and George were out with Ernie this morning and afternoon selecting this area, Van worked in the Museum while I busied myself finding out what I could about the activities of S.S. Time. A cyclone passed somewhere just south of us yesterday and as a result we had an extremely high tide last night. The water flooded the streets along the front and reached about a foot up the piles on which the Museum is constructed. Another six inches and a lot of the stuff we have already collected would have been jeopardised. In my wanderings and enquiries I made the acquaintance of McLoughlin, District Superintendent of railways, Good, Cairns head of Howard Smith, Ltd., who run the Time, and, of course, Dupain. Each of them referred me to the other, at least by inference, and all three of them had a meeting this after- oon, accomplishing precisely nothing, according to their latest reports. The whole situation is something that not even the U.S. would put up with from its labor leaders. It is all blamed on Communist influence, of course, as such things are everywhere, yet one cannot conceive such things happening in Russia itself. Wednesday, 24 March 1948. A lovely new precedent has been set by the Towns- ville wharfies - they are unloading the Time but are receiving an extra ten shillings an hour, known as "stench pay". A lot of her cargo consisted of vegetables, which owing to the efforts, or lack of them, of the strikers, have gone bad. The workers demanded therefore an in- crease of about 150%, before they would return to the ship to work her, on account of the evil smell of the rotting cargo. There is not much to add to remarks previously made; we may receive some sort of information from Townsville tomorrow relative to the costs and possibility of shipping the stuff by road but are inclined to let it remain on the ship and take a chance on its arrival. There are pros and cons to both methods of shipment and the third, shipping by rail, is as dubious as either of the other two alternatives. Today was spent, so far as I was concerned, in preparing for the five day camp over the Easter period, which will receive the name Speewah Camp, Clohesy River. Rations have been purchased, all necessary supplies are being borrowed, when possible, and we should not be out of pocket as most of the stuff I have got consists of expendables, such as batteries, collecting materials and so on. The costs of rations will be much more than offset by the money saved in hotel bills. By the time we return, probably some time on Tuesday, there may be some- thin definite, and perhaps even good, about S.S. Time.