Monday Sept. 27: Cooktown has two airports, and two planes a week on local service. QANTAS planes, too, call on their way to New Guinea. On local service, a DC3 calls Wednesdays and Thursdays, on its way to, and back from, Thursday Island. Monday's plane comes from Cairns, and returns there as soon as it can be unloaded and reloaded at the small airport a mile or two up the Endeavour River from town. The Douglas uses the big ex-military field nine miles up the river, or rather, nine miles out of town. Monday's plane is a little De Haviland biplane, carrying six or seven passengers, depending on the size of the passengers and the weight of baggage they have. The local agent is not fussy about a few pounds overweight in baggage. The air trip to Cairns costs 38/6, as against 40/- on the launch "Merinda" which makes the trip between the two ports once a week, and takes a good 12 hours to do it. Other passengers this morning included Mrs. Sheppheard of Musgrave, who was badly air sick; Dan O'Brien, wearing a clean celluloid collar - for once; and a Roman Catholic priest who chattered nervously before we took off, and mouthed rapidly over a sacred book most of the time we were in the air. Another passenger was a young chap we had met at Thursday Island. Don Vernon was travelling with me as far as Cairns, on his way through to Brisbane, and home. The seventh passenger, who was to have ridden in from the Starcke River, away north of Cooktown, did not turn up. He could have no way of knowing we were taking off hours ahead of calendar, and the agent surmised that after his long ride he would have to wait a week for another seat on a plane. Our priest would perhaps have been even more jittery had he known that the most important part, and half the weight in Don's canvas bag was a live carpet snake, being carried against all air-safety regulations, after the agent's refusal to accept it as freight. Don carried only his shaving kit and notebooks as personal gear. Space left by the snake was filled with a homecoming contribution of soap. By some freak of controlled distribution, soap is scarce in Brisbane and plentiful in the far north. Mindful of earlier experience I too was carrying supplies south to the source of all supplies. Mine was tobacco. Our flight was too early in the morning - a dull morning - for good views of the mountains, but I shot some photos of Mt. Fimegan as we passed it on the sea- ward side. Finnegan is by far the most massive and conspicuous peak north of the Bloomfield River. The northern termination of the big, continuous rainforests is on Mt. Amos and the Big Tableland. These elevations are the last of any con- sequence on the coastal range of mountains. We were in Cairns, and sitting down to breakfast at Hides' Hotel before 9 oclock. Don's plane for Brisbane left about 1.30. Hides' seemed palatial after the shacks and rickety old structures which serve for hotels on the Peninsula, and I was unsure of my footing on the polished tile floors. Ern Stephens came in to meet Don and lunch with us. During the morning I checked on shipping and found that the "Pioneer Star" is now supposed to sail from Brisbane on Oct. 17. Also discovered that the small vessel "Lady Jocelyn," owned by John Burke Ltd., is expected to arrive in Cairns from the Annie River toward the end of the week. Our Coen collections should be on the Lady Jocelyn. Mack of the Queensland Museum has been making a fuss about the non-arrival of Don's Coen collections and has put the matter of their shipment - or delay in Coen - into the hands of the police at Coen. Here at Hides', "Gentlemen are requested to wear coats for all meals, ties for dinner." I did not carry a coat on the Peninsula. Left all but field clothing with the manager of the hotel when we went bush. Today, when I opened my bags, I could find no coat. The manager, Geoff Henderson, is away on business in Townsville. The staff very upset, when a search everywhere, including Henderson's and Mrs. Henderson's closets, revealed no belongings of mine. I appear at meals respectable clad in one of Henderson's rather narrow shoulder'd coats.