Wednesday March 10 Sitting all night the Qld. parliament passed, with only 3 opposing votes, a strong bill forbidding picketing, etc. At Mackay the poor old Time struck more trouble. Men ceased unloading after a stopwork meeting. George Brooks came to our rescue and made up two good killing jars; Van has a lot of makeshift tow unravelled, and all is ready for a week's work in the Mossman Gorge With Stephens, George and Van visited the flying fox camp three miles out of town only to find the beasts gone. These bats move about, following the flowering and fruiting of various trees. Another bat-hunting excursion in the evening. George, Van and I with Mr. and Mrs. George Brooks and their two small boys to Barron Waters, in the mouth of the Barron Gorge. A delightful spot, run as a tourist season pleasure resort by Mr. and Mrs. Bob Hunter. Got there too late in the evening to see much of the surroundings. On the north bank of the river. An old clearing in the rain forest, with several low rambling buildings, including a museum and a tea house, a garden of papaws and bananas, and various ornamental trees and shrubs. "Development" has been done very simply and informally. Mountains rising high and hemming in the place on three sides. Tall rain forest all around the clearing. The fast flowing Barron River, here about 60-80 yds. wide, and somewhat muddy after the rains, has tall casuarinas in the forest of its banks. Brooks had told us of numerous small bats flying at dusk, and tube- nosed bats hanging on the Hunter's radio aerial. We saw both, but could not get a shot at anything. After a good chicken dinner, eaten by the dim light of an Alladin lamp (there is no electricity here, within a couple of miles of the hydro plant that supplies Cairns), George and Van jacked for other mammals, guided by Hunter, while I diverted the attention of three noisy small boys and their mothers. The hunters saw nothing to get a shot at. The Hunters live a pleasant sort of life not accompanied by hard work. Both keen naturalists, they live in surroundings which are a natur- alist's paradise. Their museum collection of insects, also artifacts, and so on, helps to attract tourists in the winter months. Cairns people drive out there to swim, fish, and relax in the summer season. Hunter does some commercial collecting and rearing of insects for dealers in the U.S. From the Hunters we heard more tales of strange mammals, this time inconspicuous creatures, which live in the rain-forests and are seldom seen even by those who have the time and inclination to seek and observe. There is a rare small creature (possibly Petaurus) which climbs big trees in a series of vertical jumps, with all four limbs spreadeagled. Yester- day, Hunter's two blackboys uncovered under some old rubbish, killed but did not keep, a small bluish rat quite strange to them. A pleasant even- ing, yarnin in the living room, and roaming in the night, listening to animal sounds, and watching the lights of the hunters flashing into the trees. A new night noise to me was the calling of the Surinam Giant Toad (Bufo gigas), introduced some years ago to control cane beetles, and now spread all through the coastal and near-coastal country adjacent to cane- growing areas, and eating up all kinds of beetles. The dog rushed out to the edge of the rain-forest now and then to bark at wild pigs. Wild pigs do much damage on cane farms in the Cairns area and there is a bounty of L.1 on their snouts.