Lae-Kaindi Saturday, April 4. Called at the Forest Office after breakfast and there met Joe Havel, Forest Officer in charge of all operations here. A Hungarian who received most of his education in Australia and is a graduate forester. Left Bulolo at 8:45 to drive to Wau (19 miles), where Womersley left his car and we all piled into the Land Rover to within a mile of Edie Creek. There we started up a new road leading to an ultra short wave radiophone relay station on the top of Mt. Kaindi, at somewhere about 8000 feet. Road very muddy in places, and rutted by rains, but by putting chains on the rear wheels we managed to go between 1 and 2 miles, where ground which had slipped from above blocked us. Altitude by aneroid 6700 feet. Rain began at that time (noon) but we ate a hamper lunch in the Land Rover or standing under raincoats, and did some plant collecting, before slipping and sliding to lower levels on the wet, yellow clay of the new road. A rather numerous work gang scattered along the road proved to be Kukukukus from the Menyamy area. One man was in the traditional grass skirt and bark cape; the rest in calicos of one kind or another issued by government, which employed them. They were a cheerful, friendly lot. Ran behind the Land Rover as we went down the road. Good tall forest above the Edie Creek road apparently dominated at least in places by Nothofagus grandis. Saw some big Phyllocladus, small Dacrydium falciforme, and many tress unknown to me or to Womersley. Could not see much fro rain; and my field glasses are in the cargo from New York. From the Kaindi road junction we drove to Edi Creek, famed as a gold mining center in the 1920's, and stopped on the far side of a bridge across the creek, where Womersley said the negotiable road ended (in World War II a jeep road was put through from Edie Creek to Bulldog on the Lakekumu, in Papua, to where small vessels can ascend from the Gulf of Papua. We were on the beginning of that road). Several small houses scattered on the slopes around about appeared to belong to absentee white men. A sizable house on the slope above where we parked, and under which we sheltered from rain, was owned by a gold mining company. All the gold mining here was placer workings. The lower slopes and the main creek and gullies much altered in consequence. Very rich gold was got here -- as much as 300 oz. in one day from one claim. In the old days, the Kukukukus occasionally raided the diggings. A few boxing claims still being worked by teams of flannel-shirted boys, employed by white men who come up from Wau occasionally to collect the gold. Photographed one team at work. Nothofagus forest still caps the ridges at Edie Creek. On clayey slopes, stripped in mining operations, are open shrubberies of a yellow flowered Vaccinium, Rhododendron (5 spp. seen, all sterile), and a tall inconspicuously flowered orchid of epiphytic type. Collected a few plants back along the road to the "Lookout" at c. 5000 ft., from which one has a grand view of the Wau Valley. A beautiful little, prostrate, violet-flowered Pratia plentiful on rock faces. Two Begonia spp. (one with pink, the other red flowers) and an Impatiens were local in moist recesses on the roadside. Sluicing and reef mining for gold still goes on at Wau. A sawmill cuts about 3 million super feet of Klinkii Pine a year. Wau is about on the upper edge (3600 ft.) of this fine softwood tree.