river crossing and picked up a spur line, leading nowhere, which he had cut in order to lay out some traps. Not knowing that I followed the spur and afterwards got myself bushed on reaching the end of the spur. Another nasty thing I find about the Australian scrub is connected with lawyer vine, that spiked and vicious thing that grows so profusely. The small young tendrils of it cling and tear at one and if removed by hand leave spines sticking in the flesh so small that they are not noticed or felt - until next day, when the flesh around the spot swells and festers. Just at the moment I have no fewer than seven such swellings. Dupain is supposed to telephone some time tomorrow giving us word of Time but if I do not hear, I shall go to the nearest telephone on Tuesday and call him. If there is no particular news it is uncertain when we shall return to Cairns but I am prepared to pack up at a moment's notice myself and get back and on with the job. There is the matter of our passage north to be considered as well as the actual arrival of the freight. Monday, 5 April 1948. This is the first really, consistently wet day we have had and incidentally is the day on which Len and George started their climb of Bellenden Kerr. They went up with two local boys who are acting as guides and had not been gone from camp a half-hour before the rain started. That was about 7.15 and it is now 2.15; the whole day has been a series of heavy downpours separated by lighter drizzles. George and I had hoped to signal by morse, using flashlights but now I can barely see the loom of the mountain, They will not get back until Wednesday, if they carry out their plan. Van took over George's trap-line in addition to his own and for the first part of the morning was bemoaning the fact that he was not with them. Recently however, his moans have become less. The new trap-lines which both Van and George laid last night were quite productive and Van has a full day of prepa- rations. For myself, I have spent the morning soaking my hand in a bichloride of mercury solution; the barbed wire jag in it finally became infected, together with a couple of lawyer cane splinters which penetrated near the barbed wire hole. In any event, the weather has been such that I could do nothing in the way of collecting and I decided against the B.K. climb because I feel that the things to come will be rather harder and there is no point in burning myself out over non-essentials like that. Tomorrow, unless word has come from him, I must somehow get in touch with Dupain and arrange for our return to Cairns on Thursday, whether or not there is any particular word of S.S. Time. I think this is the first time since leaving the Museum that I have touched a typewriter by daylight and it feels odd somehow. Shortly before coming to this camp, we took delivery of three secondhand bicycles and Van and I ride gravely about our various duties. Len and George have not yet been persuaded to ride them, although they were Len's idea, but I find mine to be a great saving on the feet. Pretty well everybody rides them in Cairns but I find myself showing huge attention to motor traffic and judging carefully whether or not I can cross a road in safe time before a car perhaps almost half a mile away, which I see in the distance, can do so. As I am more or less on the sick list and Van is so busy anyway, I am doing all the cooking today. We have just consumed a lunch of Vienna sausage, carrots, toast, marmalade, cheese, butter, tea and oranges picked from a tree growing behind the camp. I doubt if King George did as well and I am quite sure George and Len did not. Bully beef, under a rock overhang, likely.