123 Goroka - Kainantu - Okapa - Purosa Thursday, September 17. Left Goroka 8:55 a.m. well laden on Land Rover and trailer with stores for three weeks, stocks of most collecting supplies for two months, and whatever else could be loaded on. Made stop at relic stand of Araucaria forest on the Dunantina River (5100 ft.) and on top of Compri Hill (6500 ft.) and arrived Kainantu Hotel 12:25. Altitude there 5650 ft. (all altitudes uncorrected). Distance 61 miles. Road in good condition; getting rather dusty in places. After lunch we called at the sub-district office and presented to ADO A.M. (Gus) Bottrill a letter of introduction from [illegible] ADC Mick Foley. Bottrill very cordial. Has served in both Papua and this territory. Formerly stationed at Tapina in the Goilala country and has climbed Mt. Albert Edward. Met there Cadet Patrol Officer Gavin Carter, who is stationed at Okapa. Tall, clean looking young fellow with what will probably be, in time, a most ferocious moustache. Also Bill Balmain, a youthful chap of the Department of Mines who buys the gold mined locally by natives. Also there was an agricultural officer of whose name I have no record, and District Education Officer Gordon W.J. McMeekin. When talking was finished it was too late in the day to do the 39-mile drive to Okapa so we put up at the Hotel Kainantu for the night. The owner Symons, had lost his manager (gone to Hollandia tu run the Yacht Club) and Mrs. Symons, big pleasant German women, was in charge. She had fired all the native staff a couple of days previously and was doing everything herself with the help of two very raw native boys. Kainantu is pleasantly situated on the "Upper Ramu Plateau" in a basin-shaped valley drained by the main southern tributary of the Ramu River. The valley is nearly treeless except for casuarinas along the river, and the grass would appear to be burned annually. The result is clean green slopes, in contrast with the rough "pit-pit" (wild sugarcane) which characterizes the induced grasslands of the Goroka valley. Friday, September 18. Left Kainantu at 8:40 a.m. after a final call at the sub-district office. Met at the office Dr. Zigas, New-Australian medico of the Administration who, with Dr. Carleton Gajdusek of the U.S. did the original research on kuru disease. Good clean type of young fellow, but very nervous in manner. Spoke of the work presently being done on kuru (the "laughing death" of the journalists). Virus infection, a suspected cause, has been pretty well eliminated. Genetical aspects are now being studied by a team from Adelaide University. Maa, one of the entomologists of the great Bishop Museum project on Pacific insects, is to begin an ectoparasite survey on September 25. A nutritional survey has been done by one Lucy Hamilton. Zigas (and apparently Gajdusek, who was here recently) are getting interesting results from metabolism studies. Kuru patients show a marked increase in amino acid, for example, indicating the presence of some poison. The incidence of kuru is 1-2% of susceptible population; it is much higher in women than in men. Kuru affects the Fore and some related peoples numbering about 20,000. Something apparently identical clinically has been reported recently from the Wabag area on the Western Highlands. Nine miles out of Kainantu we entered forest at 6200 ft. Broken by grassy areas, this continued to 13 miles from Kainantu, where, near Sonofi (mission of some kind), we dropped into a narrow limestone valley bottoming at 6200 ft. Conspicuous jagged limestone outcrops at about 6350 ft., before Sonofi.