Oomsis Took an hour off in the morning to observe activities and make photos at the new Forest Dept. log paddock about 1/3 mile up the road from camp. Two D7 Caterpillar tractors hauling logs from the forest, one working in the paddock. Four trucks carry the logs to the govt. sawmill in Lae. Including the two cadets, who don't count for much in anyone's estimation, there were 6 white men involved: two driving the tractors hauling from the forest, one driving a truck, and Bill Jenkins in charge. All wore shorts, only 2 had shirts. Was impressed with the efficiency of the operations. No time lost anywhere (including depreciation allowance, the tractors cost 5 to 6 pounds an hour to run). The yard tractor was driven by a native who showed very good judgment and much experience in pushing logs around with the blade of his Caterpillar. This boy, with 10 years of experience in various aspects of lumbering, is paid only 5 pounds 4 shillings a month and keep. According to Jenkins, he has trained a succession of boys only to have them snapped up by private industry, which pays much higher wages. The logs are hauled in to the paddock in up to 80 ft. lengths, which are cut into logs 40 ft. in maximum length by boys with crosscut saws and wedges. Anisoptera, kwila (Afzelia), and Planchonia (a nice pink wood) were in the paddock. The biggest log I saw handled (by the native tractor driver) had a girth of about 15 feet and was estimated by Jenkins to contain 4300 superficial feet of timber. The biggest log they had brought in for a long time. Another red letter day for Van. Having only one bat from shooting last night, and little in traps, he sent his two boys out this afternoon with axes to search for Pogonomys trees. They cut down two fair sized trees quite close to camp. One yielded 4-5 Pogonomys, the other a like number of the small bat Philetor ruhi. We now have 26 species of mammals from the camp. Our best post-war camp before this was Peria Ok. in 1953, where 24 spp. of mammals were collected. Breakdowns of the collections of pre-war camps are not available. (Many of the Philetor escaped the boys). The Womersleys brought the news that Tom and Margaret Gilliard were flying home from Madang via Goroka and Port Moresby, and therefore would not be visiting Lae. Saturday, May 2. Same weather pattern as the last couple of days or more, but with stronger wind up the valley in the afternoon. Van and I, each with 2 boys, John Collins, the two cadets with a boy of theirs, spent the morning on Lake Wanum. We were guided by Lionel Baker, who had his young son Vernon with him. Drove down the road two miles to Baker's plantation, thence by a plantation road between one and two miles. Left the Land Rover in an area of young cocoa, and walked rather more than a mile to the lake. All of the route to quite near the lake was on the flats of Oomsis Creek, and most of the way between the cocoa and the lake it was through primary and old secondary rain forest. A two-way gutter of a little stream connects the creek with the lake. Today the water was flowing from the lake to the Oomsis. Lionel says that during last wet season the creek rose about 6 inches over its banks and into the lake. The lake shore in the vicinity of the two-way creek (c. E side) was low and marshy and fringed with reeds and, in deep water, great beds of the pink lotus, Nelumbium sp. The other shores which we saw, on distant views, were steep and rising into grassy hills in places capped by relic rain forest. Of irregular outline, the lake is roughly 2 miles by 1. The country rock seems to be a rotten pale granite (Van has a specimen from the little bay where we reached the lake shore after skirting it for perhaps 1/4 mile on grassy slopes). It would seem that Lake Wanum, the part of the Oomsis creek valley