166 Lae-Port Moresby Next call at Department of Agriculture, where Convoy, extension service chief, is Acting Director. Seems very competent and well informed. New Guinea coffee very irregular in type and quality. Climatic and edaphic. Good liquoring coffee being produced on terrace lands on the Highlands; product of river alluvial soils there is poor. Natives of Daga area producing an excellent coffee. Lowland arabica plantings, being pushed as a native cash crop in Samarai area in 1956, now being replaced with robusta. Mrs. Andersen, head librarian of the dept., very pleasant. Fair collection of books and periodicals. Few periodicals bound. Acute shortage of space. G.T. Roscoe, Director of Education, was known by me in Gulf of Carpentaria in 1926. Probably a thinker rather than a doer. Student of New Guinea history. Sees urgent need to uplift brown brother educationally and economically. Has recently published a book, Our neighbours in Netherlands New Guinea, (Jacaranda Press). Morris Rapson, Chief, Division of Fisheries, is another who appears over zealous in uplift of the native. Has a special fund for financing native fishermen in purchase of nets. Business houses were making too much profit. Nets (nylon, etc. of latest types) now available to natives at non-profit prices. Free drying, etc. Have from Rapson a copy of Ian Munro's recent checklist of Fishes of the New Guinea Region. Dinner party at the Willis house. Other guests (with wives) were Fred Blanch (regional manager, Bank N.S. Wales), Greg Spence (sales manager, Steamship Trading Co.), Arthur Cooper (security officer; an Englishman with long experience in West Africa), and a barrister whose name I have forgotten. Thursday, December 17. Another morning at Konedobu, seeing Dr. John Gunther (Acting Administrator), Evan Champion (Commissioner of Land Titles), Julius (Government Anthropologist), Alan Roberts (Director of Native Affairs), "Speed" Graham (Acting Registrar of Native Cooperatives), and Joe Szent-Ivany (entomologist). Gunther interested in our work. Gave a good, straightforward outline of the Kuru research situation. A conference of medical research men, etc. being held in Australia next week to examine the whole matter, and try to rectify the present unpleasant relations between the Australian and American research teams. Scraggs (Director of Health) and Julius going from here. Trouble stems largely from a personality clash between Gajdusek of U.S.A. and MacPherson ?? of Australia. Australia had the opportunity to lead in the research, but neglected it. Gajdusek tries to hog the field and is a generally unpleasant person, with whom only Zigas has been able to work in Kuru research. Gajdusek considered academically honest and one of the great medical brains of today by everyone concerned excepting perhaps MacPherson ??. Champion ill with pernicious anaemia. Told of a man of National Bureau of mapping (Canberra), named H.R. Johnson, who is climbing the high mountains of P-NG in connection with a survey which will begin next year with some new and very accurate instrument for measuring distances. Johnson climbs the mountains, finds what angles can be made from them, and erects cairns when stones are available. Has climbed Mt. Victoria, spending five days on top and is about to climb Mt. Suckling. No white man has been on top of Suckling. Johnson a strange type. Lives on kippered snacks. Is alone on the project with natives,