WILD ANIMALS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18999, 23 October 1923, Page 6

WILD ANIMALS.

SEARCHING AUSTRALIA. BRITISH MUSEUM PARTY. € <i (Feoii Odb Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY. October 10. The York Peninsula, the northern point of Eastern Australia, had. up to the time of writing his last letter, proved disappointing to Captain Wilkins, the famous Australian airman and explorer, and hia party, who are travelling through the wildest parts of Australia in an endeavour to make a complete collection of Australian fauna for the British Museum. Captain Wilkins’s party includes brilliant young scientists and carries complete equipment for treating and preserving the animals and birds as they are caught. After scouring’ Western Queensland, the party returned to Brisbane, and then took steamer for Thursday Island, where they transferred themselves and their paraphernalia to a specially-chartered motor launch and were soon cruising along the coast of the peninsula and rambling about the islands and mainland. ..

“All hands,” says Captain 'Wilkins, ‘‘eagerly scanned the sandy beaches for birds or signs of turtle. At Bird Island we went ashore, but Were just too late lo capture a small green turtle that paddled jts way through the snow-white sand and out through the water to beyond the reef. The island- was. the first real coral island that some of us had visited. A few dwarfed palms wore scattered beneath the taller trees that were festooned with. ferns and creepers. The foliage met overhead, obscuring not only the sun, but —what was more important to us —the birds that sat on, the uppermost branches, from our view. “Near the centre of the island, in a little glade surrounded with the fern-laced trees, we found a _ native ‘gunyah,’ and the wreckage of a white man’s camp. Skeletons of turtle were strewn about, and a single drying rack, like a huge ‘griddleused for drying beche-de-mer —was still in good order. Some wandering fishermen had been there recently, for their tracks were found on the opposite beach, and, following the wriggly markings of a turtle, the footprints on the sand disclosed a tale of successful hunting. The birds we saw were shy and difficult to shoot, and only a few were taken. At Cape Grenville, a seepage from the hillside assured a constant supply of water near at hand. We found many such seepages on this part of York Peninsula, and water may be obtained every few miles, even in the driest season. It is not so with regard to food. In order to lighten our load we had brought very little food with us, expecting to live for the most part on the bodies of the game secured, saving the skins for specimens. Our friends on the launch returned to Thursday Island, and we were left on the beach surrounded with boxes of collecting gear. guns, hammocks, and blankets, and flour, tea. and sugar, enough to last for two months. We had expected to find dense tropical jungle, with wild life in abundance. We hunted with indifferent success for a fortnight. One large wallaby was seen and a few tracks of a smaller variety. A native cat investigated one of our traps, but it was too sharp in action for the mechanism, and left onlv its whiskers to tell us of its visit. Fish 'could he caught hv drawing a net in a small bight near the cape, and oysters were in abundance on the rocks uncovered by the tide, which falls about Bft at times. Tins place was impossible as a collecting camp, so we set out in our small boat across strait, to Hicks Island, where Mr Turnbull has established a plantation in which cotton and tropical fruits crow luxuriously. There the first natives visited our camp. They brought us crabs in return for flour, tea.* and sugar, and Johnnie—one of tha men who had at one time accompanied a survey party for a time—volunteered to come with us to Temple Bay and show us where “plenty too much wallaby he walk about.”