171 Kuranda With Evan and Pat Balnaves, visitors from Townsville whom I have got to know at the hotel, drove in the morning to Mona Mona Mission, c. 18 miles NW of Kuranda. Good road, mostly through rain forest of the range crest. Mona Mona a Seventh Day Adventist Mission to the aborigines. Mission pays personnel, govt. apparently provides considerable financial support. Arrived in rain. Dug out the superintendent-pastor, Mr. Leitzner. A not very enthusiastic man who told us that his 320 charges were camped 8 miles away on the Barren on annual walkabout lasting two weeks. Mission sited in poor open forest on a ridge crest. Substantial staff dwellings, school, clinic, and modernistic new church. Abos live in small 1-2 roomed family houses of European type, raised on high stumps, and without verandas or window awnings. Settlement looked bleak in the rain; must be most unattractive on a hot, sunny day. Among first things I noticed were a butchers block and cold chamber. These "7 days" eat meat. Vegetarianism not required for fellowship in the church; only certain unclean beasts, such as pigs and rabbits, must not be eaten, according to Leitzner. The mission seeks to adjust the abos to civilized life. Encourages them to go out to work. Engages in sawmilling and cattle raising. Many abos employed and paid by mission, which has store, bakery and butchery and sells food to the abos. Schooling up to at least 8th grade. Halfcastes and other mixed bloods learn faster and generally are more cleanly in habits than the full bloods who form majority of population. People good at art and music; most mission girls play the piano quite well; men prefer banjo and mandoline. Greatest trouble is in enforcing, by frequent inspections, cleanliness in the houses. For some years the mission milled timber for sale in the open market - until compelled by industry pressures to unionize their labor. Timber now cut only for mission use. Effort to grow vegetables for the station has been given up; a truck load brought from Cairns weekly. Place seems highly institutionalized. Staff of superintendent 2 married school teachers, trained nurse, engineer, carpenter, and two in the office - all whites. Mission established over 40 years ago. Besides the Kuranda tribe (Negrites), residents include diabetics and post-Hansen patients from all over North Queensland. Afternoon spent on a visit to the new Tinaroo high dam on the upper Barren. Dam 130 ft. high x 1790 ft. long, ponded area l3 sq. miles. Built to irrigate 1100 new farms growing tobacco, small crops, tropical crops and fattening beef cattle. Present surroundings raw and crude, but a start has been made in landscaping. Dam built at $l million under estimated cost. Expected to fill this wet season. Ponded area not properly cleared. Foul smell of rotting vegetation from a great valve through which water is released to maintain flow for a hydro-electric plant under the Barren Falls. This drive to Tinaroo, through the Mareeba tobacco lands, and rich red volcanic corn lands of the lower Atherton Tableland, was with Gil and Rose Bates, who drove up from Cairns for the afternoon. Bates informed me of a recent report of the legendary (?) "marsupial tiger" having been sighted in the Julatten-Mt. Lewis area. A big area of high country on Mt. Lewis now accessible by a forest access road. Sunday, December 27. Much rain from the cyclone last night; some heavy, gusty showers today. No excursions.