5. Thorne told me that the American Consulate in Brisbane, closed for years, was re-opened about a week ago. Friday, March 20. The Fred Laceys drove me to Towomba to visit my Uncle Alexander Andrew (89) and Aunt S.E. Andrew (86). Returned to Hawthor t Horne after dark. A flare-up yesterday and today of an "indolent strep throat" which has been with me since January 9. Heavy treatment with antibiotics and sulfa drugs for 7-8 weeks in Florida failed to move it. Same can be said of a daily dosage of a million units Penicillin and two million units Albamycin for the last 8 or 9 days. Australia has a new market for old cow and bull meat. It is being butchered and sold in quantity for hamburgers in the U.S. (West Coast)? High prices are being paid for this rubbish, and since the trade started, about 8 months ago, all cattle prices have bounded up. Saturday, March 21. To Brisbane in morning to do odds and ends of small shopping - including tissue paper for the drying of big, delicate flowers, which I forgot while outfitting in New York. Learned that my exposure meter case, lost when seating in our plane was rearranged in San Francisco, has been recovered and should reach me in Lae in about 5 days. In Woolworth's I was amazed to see staghorn ferns (Platycerium grandis), elkhorn ferns (P. allicorne), and rock orchids (Dendrobium speciosum) on sale. Well-grown, no doubt wild.plants, somewhat knocked about by careless handling and stacked on a counter. The orchids were priced at 4/1l, an 18-inch staghorn fern at 9/- . I thought such ornamental native plants were protected by law. The 1948 Archbold Expedition was given special permission to collect orchids. Sunday, March 22. Left Brisbane 1:35 AM. by Qantas Super Constellation and arrived Port Moresby 6:35 AM. Smooth trip. Plane by no means full. A dull, threatening morning at Port Moresby. Mountains of the interior loomed high and black as we approached the coast from the Coral sea just after dawn, and we slipped into Jackson Airport from the Bootless Inlet side under a thin low bank of fog. At airport to meet us were John Womersley and Lorrie Edwards of the Dept. of Forests, Dr. Dorothy Shaw of Dept. of Agriculture, and Allan Willis. Willis was transport man on our Fly River Expedition in 1936; now Plantation General Manager for Steamships Trading Co. Not knowing that this time we are under the official wing, and learning somewhere that we were to arrive today, he was good enough to check hotel reservations for us, mention our coming to various friends, and get up early to meet us at the airport some 6-8 miles out of town. We found awaiting us, in charge of Willis, two of our boys (Kim, #1 cook and Liklik, mammal boy), recruited by Dusty Miller of Samarai. However, we have the disturbing news that our cargo from New York, which reached Sydney on the Pioneer Isle February 16, has not arrived in Lae. Further, John Womersley tells me, Buntings, our agents in Lae, have not received shipping documents which were sent from New York by registered air mail on January 5. After Womersley and Edwards had breakfasted (Van and I had on the plane, at 5:30 AM., as we watched the day dawn, a substantial breakfast of canned orange juice, fruit cup (canned), cornflakes, and fried fish), we went sightseeing in an official car with native driver. Drove around the back of the high ridge immediately behind the town, and up its slopes to a quarry in a saddle which eventually will be dug down to form a 350-ft.-deep road cutting through the ridge,