Day 5: Wednesday December 27 1933
Still raining, sun not visible and Bob's watch stopped. No time. QED. Finally Ted in a fit of despondency tried to light a fire, but failed; Cliff gave it a shot, but failed; Avon and Bob failed; Ted and Avon failed and so on till Fate, having got the dirt off the liver, allowed Avon's labours to be rewarded and so after 3 hours we had a small blaze going. We had already breakfasted in our tents having 3 pieces of BREAD covered with butter and jam, each and so were not so hungry when we finally got up. We had had a good night and found the tents as waterproof as could be expected in such weather. When the sun finally peeked out, I got up to snap the camp and soon all the rest were up. We then meandered off to collect wood, which was plentiful.
While doing this we observed that the Poulter had become a muddy torrent. When we came back we found the billy boiling and Chef Ted making a billy-full of Van Houtins cocoa. An hour or so later we amused ourselves by making flapjacks and what's more - eating them! They and the weather made us so heavy that the best the majority of us could do was to totter tent-wards and allow the conglomeration to fight the inner man. We emerged later to cook our socks on the blazing fire. Once more we collected a huge pile of wood and put the billies on for the evening meal of STEW and TEA. The rain had come on with renewed vigor and when we were finished dipping into the nosebags we went into the bush to exercise ourselves pushing down rotten trees. Later we returned to the fire and as the rain had ceased we piled on the wood and sat yarning and frying various garments round the huge blaze until about 8:30 when we retired. The sandflies had gone due to the cold but their bites itched like mad. Looking out at 9pm we gave a hooray! For the weather had cleared, there being an absence of mist on the tops and very few clouds.