the road, and a smaller hole below the road. River said to be full of fish, including big barramundi and freshwater sharks. Saw none, and Hughie, out for a feed of fish with a .303 rifle, came back empty handed. Nor did we see the freshwater and saltwater crocodiles which are reported to live in the big holes. The Hann is a fine water sup- ply, running through poor sandy messmate country. Said to rise in several big springs in red sandy "desert" (poorly grassed scrub) country about 20 miles above the road. 30th. Left Hann River 6:10 and arrived at Laura about 1:30. The last few miles of the road very dusty. So-called bull dust flats of grey soil, lightly timbered with teatree and with numerous magnetic anthills. Stopped at a dry creek about a mile south of the Kennedy River to photograph and collect the great "Cabbage Palm" Corypha alata, growing in a sort of monsoon forest characterized by Terminalia sp. Unfortu- nately the palms were sterile. In Australia, Corypha is restricted to the lower Cape York Peninsula, and it seems that all previous records are from the western fall of the Peninsula. A Main Roads construction party camped on the Little Laura River, working on a new low-level crossing. Main Roads is concentrating on river crossings on the road between Portland Roads and railhead at Laura. It is the rivers that make travel impossible during the wet season. Efforts at road making in the vast stretches of the Peninsula seem pun- ily inadequate. Finance is niggardly. I doubt if government is getting value for money spent on wages. Equipment is meagre and obsolete. A sorry show. The kind of thing that makes northerners boil over when they talk about the government. Laura, on the Laura River, is terminus of a 37-mile (?) single track rd road which was thrust out toward the Palmer River oilfield in the 'seventies. The railroad had reached the Laura River when the lush days of the Palmer ended. An expensive concrete and steel bridge was com- pleted across the river at about that time. One loco crossed the bridge. Laura has become the outlet for a great, sparsely occupied area of cattle and mining country. The town consists of a railroad goods shed, pub, store, and police station. I saw no private dwellings other than pensioners' shacks on the river. The bridge was carried away by a high flood about 1948. The two central piers broke off like carrots, at the same level above the river. No sign of reinforcing steel. Looks as if some engineer made a mistake in levels, and had extensions just mortared on top of the piers (or was reinforced concrete used in those days?). In Laura I had several talks with Howell, who has pioneered to- bacco growing in the neighborhood. Last year he had 16 acres under crop and topped the Australian market with his leaf. Howell, middle aged, has one son, who is in partnership with him. Howell senior was formerly in charge of tobacco experiments in Queensland for the CSIR. Liked Laura best of all the localities in which he had experimental plot, and when the Qld. govt. took over tobacco experiments from CSIR, he resigned and took up land there. Equable temperatures, and good type of soil, make Laura suitable for tobacco. Night temperatures never low enough for the reproductive processes of blue mold, from which the area is free. Tobacco does best on sandy messmate ridges, and is irrigated with water pumped from a hole in the river.