158. Wed. Sept. 2: Traveled from Cooktown to Shipton's Flat on a 2½ ton Chev truck chartered from Norman Watkin of Helenvale. The first time on the expedition that we have had a truck big enough to carry our stuff comfortably and without high stacking. Left Cooktown about 11 am (Marie with us), had an hour or more out for lunch at Kate Watkin's Lion's Den Hotel at Helenvale (21 miles) and got to Shipton's Flat (9 more miles) about 3:35. Road has been worked on in spots since I was here in February, and is reasonably good for a bush track in mountain country. We are very comfortably housed in three of the ranch buildings of the old sawmill. Marie and I have the former manager's cottage, the blackboys have the former laundry and bath house, while the rest of the party occupy the former bachelor's quarters. All good frame buildings, recently swept by Jack Roberts, the caretaker, and his blackboy Norgi. Altitude about 850 ft. Thursday Sept. 3: Guided by Norgi, George and I, accompanied by Willie and Roy, made a reconnaissance of Mt. Finnegan. Left camp at 9 o'clock and returned, very hungry, at 3:45. Using information supplied by W/O Snow, who led a military survey party based at the Flat during the last war, we tried to follow the route used by that party. Norgi was out of the district during the war and did not know the route. He led us up an old pack horse track to the crest of an 1800 ft. grassy spur on the west side of the peak, and we followed this spur, with good traveling, to 2600 ft. where the savanna forest gave way to continuous rainforest on the last lift of the mountain. While I searched for water, for a camp at the beginning of the rainforest, George went on up another 500 ft. and found good running water. I first followed the line of a former box sluice built by tin miners. Soon found that no water useful to us would be got in that direction, so returned to the edge of the rain forest and went 300 ft. down the steep side of the spur to the south, where the survey men got water (apparently in the wet season). My search was unsuccessful. We will have to camp at the edge of the rain- forest, which can be reached by packhorses, and carry water from the supply visited by George. Among 16 plants collected were five orchids in flower. One of the orchids a fine white Dendrobium which I also collected on rocks near the summit of Mt. Tozer. Here on Finnegan it grows in hundreds on the rough bark of Casuarina trees and is now a beautiful sight. Sat. Sept. 4: Collected on the creek (Parrot Ck.) which heads on Mt. Finnegan and flows through Shipton's Flat. Nothing startling in the way of plants, but Parrot Ck. is a beautiful rocky stream, falling rapidly over granite bars and shaded by an open growth of rainforest trees and the Eucalyptus-like Tristania? which has been a feature of all the [illegible] rocky streams from the West Claudie south. George and Van followed the old timber hauling track up to the big rainforest, about 1½ miles from camp, and reported very good rain forest, and trails still open after being abandoned for at least 4 years.