Sunday, Aug. 1 (Cont'd) Since about this time last year I have been in correspondence with Thompson, and this evening I went in provided with maps, hoping to add to my information on the district and discuss arrangements for getting into the Rocky Scrub, which is our big objective in this area. But old Herb had been drinking too much, and admitted it. He also was not very much at ease with us strangers. So, about 9 o'clock we called at the post office for our mail and returned to camp. Monday, Aug. 2: With George and Geoff, spent the morning in the town gathering information. Thompson recommends approach to the Rocky Scrub by way of the upper Peach River. Offers to provide motor transport over an old, disused road to a point where a battery used to stand high on the Peach, and let us have pack horses for transport into the scrub, which he says is only a couple of miles from the end of the old road. Wilson says he cannot move us until after the races - Sunday or Monday. Conversation with other people leads me to doubt the accuracy of Thompson's information. Others say the end of the old road is 6 or 8 miles from the big scrub. Thompson, now 72, is somewhat senile; Wilson, his righthand man, is saying nothing. I have the impression that some people in Coen are not so frank and willing to help as the good folk we met farther north. In town we called on Mrs. May M. Armbrust, a widow who has lived here all of her 55 years, owns a cattle run, butchering business, store, and is agent for ANA airways. e she is providing us with eggs (our first in two months), meat, and fresh vegetables. Has a rambling old house almost hidden in ornamental plantings, with a cool verandah where one sits on red-painted canvas chairs amongst pot plants, and behind the house a great arbor covered with Bougainvillea. Down on the creek (the Lankelly) is a bigrom garden planted to cabbage, white turnips, kohlrabi, salamander lettuce, radiish, eschallots, carrots, beets, tomatoes, bananas, etc. Blacks do the work, under supervision. Sergeant Farrel, chief of police and local Protector of Aboriginals, and his two constables having a busy time attending to the needs of natives in town from the cattle stations for the races and needing spending money and orders on the stores for cloth- ing. Farrell not too keen on boys from the Thursday Island area. Says they drink strong drink; he has information of a sly grog seller on the way in for the races, and hopes there will be no trouble from our bots. Why he should be especially concerned about our three boys when hundreds of other natives will be in town expecting to get the liquor they have always got, is beyond me to understand. Coen is in a flat basin in the hills where Lankelly Creek joins the Coen River. All around it are thinly timbered dry rocky hills and a bit west of south, close to the town, is conical Mt. White with exposures of white rock (quartzite) on its sides, and around the rocks a thin growth of low, dark trees which probably represent an outpost ofan-dep netate rainforest. Coen is called a town by courtesy. The total permanent white population is 25 tax 30, and the one street has buildings on only one side. A PMG staff of about 5, and the tree police, make up about a third of the population. Thompson has a small store, Mrs. Armbrust a larger one, and a butcher shop. The pub, surmounted by the blue painted sign "Drink at Herb Thompson's Coen Hotel," is the center of the town.