Lae John Womersley and I went to Qantas and talked with Asst. Traffic Manager Geoff Filtness about our charter flights (the traffic manager himself away at Goroka to organize that end of the heavy air traffic of visitors to the annual Goroka Show, being held tomorrow and Sunday). Had very good news there. Pay- load from Goroka to Keglsugl and back to Goroka will be 2400 lbs. This eliminates anxiety about cramming things into two loads from Goroka and a land carry from Kundiawa (Chimbu) 2 carrier days from Keglsugl. If we can dribble out collections either through through the govt. post at Kundiawa or by a Catholic Mission which, piloted by Father "Joe" Wallachy, makes frequent trips to Keglsugl, it will be possible to fly out everything including personnel in one flight. The charter cost will be 40 pounds per flight, which certainly is not excessive. We also made a call on Brian Sullivan, officer i/c air transport of government in this district. Yesterday or the day before he had a phone call from head/admin. in Port Moresby asking for an explanation of a complaint that certain cargo of the Archbold Expedition had been mishandled or not picked up by an admin. charter flight. Obviously a mixup somewhere. We have no complaint. The only thing to go wrong here since our arrival was the non-delivery of our ocean freight from New York and the Admin. had no part of that. I suspect that Alan Willis, who was all het up about the bungling of our cargo, got talking about it over drinks at the Papua Club and a reaction thereto by John Gunther, Asst. Administrator. There is talk in town about the annual? administration road convoy from Lae to Goroka scheduled to leave 8 am. Tuesday. Number of vehicles involved varies from 30 to 70, including many private cars and two big trucks carrying bulldozers. Convoy speed is to be an average 40 mph between rivers. An im- possible rate of travel to maintain. This evening the boys wanted to draw money to go to the pictures; 2 shillings per head. A special "Jesus" show put on by one of the missions, according to the cook. Ordinary junk shows cost 1/-. After looking at the prospects, the boys returned the money (I had made them a present of the ad- mision fee). Van has his mammal totals for Kaindi made up this evening: 27 spp. (22 Kaindi proper, 1 Wau, 4 Bulolo). From Kaindi: Pseudocheirus 3 spp., Antechinus, Phalanger 2 spp., Dactylonax, Dorcopsulus, Dendrolagus, Peroryctes, Pipistrellus (large), Miniopterus 2 spp., Rattus 2, Pogonomys, Anisomys, Melomys 2, Lorentzomys, Hyomys, Parahydromys. From Wau: Proteomodon? (partial skull). From Bulolo: Syconycteris, Melomys (different), Echymipera. Van has spared no effort and lost no opportunity to advance the collection. Number of specimens: Kaindi 117, Wau 2, Bulolo 5. Results in herps were poor. 15 frogs of c. 5 spp., 4 specimens of skinks. One snake was seen at an altitude of somewhere about 7000 ft. on the Edie Creek- Watut Divide. Saturday, May 30. Organization of the cargo completed, all but the weighing of the cook's gear and the "scaling" of the boy's swags. The useless cook's helper, Dani, was paid off. A fourth blanket was bought for the other 5 boys, and a pair of sandshoes each to protect their feet a little from the frosty grass and frozen ground of early mornings at high altitudes. We have been unable to get warm material for lap-laps, so will tear blankets in half for this purpose. As an instance of the disparity of prices asked here, BP's wanted 2 pounds a pair for sandshoes made in Australia, we bought quite a good-looking item at 9/- from one of the Chinese stores. The latter made by the Fung Keong Rubber Manufactory, Ltd., Hongkong. 60