PAPUA NEW GUINEA SNAKEBITE PROJECT
RESURRECTION

This morning I thought I felt better, least I told myself that as I forced myself to get up. I had experienced a bad night again, sleeping fitfully with confused fever-fueled dreams. I needed to get my blood flowing so I showered and went outside to walk around the accommodation compound and draw some deep breaths. Port Moresby is a little dangerous to go walking around the streets when you look under the weather.

After that I forced myself to get on with some work, tying specimen tags on specimens and listing them on the computer. While I was doing this Owen and the boys came by to pick up the car and go out to a location which was supposedly full of snakes. Ordinarily I would have been tempted but not today, I am inclined to think I am into the gentle wind-down phase of the project. I depart for home in just under a week and have a lot of admin and specimen work to do including examining all the Toxicocalamus in the UPNG collection. I called Paulus Keip and made arrangements to go over to the Biology Department in the morning. I will drop by the Museum enroute to see herpetologist Fred Kraus who has arrived in PNG to conduct fieldwork in Milne Bay Province.

As the morning wore on I began to feel increasingly less "other worldly", less nauseous and my headache departed - aided by the formalin fumes? I think not! The boys arrived back saying the location was excellent, that Papuan taipan (Oxyuranus scutellatus canni) were a certainty there, but they found only a Blue-tongued skink (Tiliqua gigas) which grinning Jasper had brought back for a pet!

I took a run down to the Haus Sik (Port Moresby General Hospital) to see Dave and get my results - all negative for Dengue and malaria which is excellent. I don't think my recovery would have been so rapid had I got one of those little bugs, it has taken me 7-9 days to recover from malaria before and I remember how sick Hinrich was with Dengue in Timor-Leste all those weeks ago. I count myself lucky, I can get on with things again, albeit at a lesser pace thave before.

After all this is the wind-down stage of the expedition, the final week.

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