Much bigger timber than I expected here. A Cycas common in one place; a fan palm (Livistona) plentiful throughout. Higgins Field is a good asphalted airstrip, and the rather numerous buildings remaining there are in good repair and freshly painted green. Would make an excellent camp for us, but I doubt if the country around it would repay working for more than a few days (savanna-forest, with shrubby growths in hollows and mangroves nearby). In charge as care- takers, and himself taken care of by a hefty Torres Strait woman, is Ernie Longford. A slight, erect, gingery old man, with maimed and shrivelled body and sun blotched skin, clad in khaki shorts and sneakers. Ernie would be repulsive but for a straight, friendly look in his red- rimmed grey eyes. Back at RIP Ginger Dick invited me to climb aboard his 4x4 truck and we drove toward Lockerbie until dusk. Drove about six miles on an uniformed bush road leading through savanna-forest under the rain-forested hills. Crossed several small streams edged with rain-forest, and drove over several sandy flats with small-leaved Melaleuca, a heath, and pitcher plants (Nepenthes). When we turned at dusk, the road ran close to the rain-forest, so we stopped to examine it until darkness drove us back to the truck. A dryish type of rain-forest here, but apparently rather rich in species of plants. The big scrubs (scrub = rain-forest) on the hills, and farther north, promise well. An instruction trip, enlivened by Ginger Dick's stories of the bush and bush creatures. The honey possum lives in the savanna-forest. Finding a native bees nest, it gnaws out the entrance, inserts its brush-tipped tail, then eats the honey adhering to the brush. The striped possum (perhaps Dactylonax or Dactylopsila?) is known from only one specimen caught at Cape York Telegraph Station and sent to Prof. Watson of Adelaide University. In one part of the rain-forest near Lockerbie luminous fungi (?) are so abundant that the forest is lit with a fairy glow in the wet season. "When my children were young, I used to take them out to see it", said Ginger Dick the Bastard. We got back to RIP well after dark to find "trouble at the yard"; all was still and silent but for a scuffling of hooves and now and then a bellow or a string of curses. A rogue bullock had broken away from the mob and after much effort on the part of men, horses and dogs, had finally been brought in among some quiet "coach" cattle. Stan and his helpers were now working in the yard (= corral), separating the killers from the other cattle. We ate a hurried meal in Stan's house about nine o'clock. Various mishaps, and the reluctance of the black- boys, delayed the start of killing until eleven o'clock. Working by electric light, they were at it all night, barefooted in the blood of the killing floor, and clad only in shorts. Seven bullocks were slaughtered for 2900 pounds of dressed beef. We left at daylight with the beef stacked on the launch and hurried back to T.I. to get it into the freezer before the heat of the day. The trip to the mainland convinced me that the Tip will be a profitable locality for our work. There is a wide variety of accessible habitats. We can be sure of cooperation from the Hollands in transport and showing us over the area. Wet weather should not seriously inter- fere with our work. The roads are better than I though we would find.