Moreover, what notable and precise information this derelict timber gave as to the strength and direction of ocean currents.  The wreck took place on the 26th October 1900 in 18 deg. 43 min.  S. lat., 147 deg. 57 min.  E. long., 72 1/2 miles in a direct line from the port of Townsville, and about 200 miles from Dunk Island.  She broke up, after a11 the cargo had been salvaged, early in January 1901, and on Tuesday, 5th February, at 10 a.m., the seas landed the first of the broken planks in Brammo Bay.  Then for a few days the arrivals were continuous.  For over 50 miles along the coast the wreckage was scattered, very little going farther north.

Nothing goes south on this part of the coast.  Yes, there is one exception during my experience.  A veritable cataclysm coincided with a stiff north-easterly breeze, and hundreds of bunches of bananas from plantations on the banks of the Johnstone River—­25 miles away—­landing-stages and steps, and the beacons from the mouth of the river, drifted south.  Most of the more buoyant debris, however, took the next tide back in the direction whence came.

When there are eight or ten islands and islets within an afternoon’s sail, and miles of mainland beach to police, variety lends her charms to the pursuit of the Beachcomber.  Landing in one of the unfrequented coves, he knows not what the winds and the tides may have spread out for inspection and acceptance.  Perhaps only an odd coco-nut from the Solomon Islands, its husk riddled by cobra and zoned with barnacles.  The germ of life may yet be there.  To plant the nut above high-water mark is an obvious duty.  Perhaps there is a paddle, with rude tracery on the handle, from the New Hebrides, part of a Fijian canoe that has been bundled over the Barrier, a wooden spoon such as Kanakas use, or the dusky globe of an incandescent lamp that has glowed out its life in the state-room of some ocean liner, or a broom of Japanese make, a coal-basket, a “fender,” a tiger nautilus shell, an oar or a rudder, a tiller, a bottle cast away fat out from land to determine the strength and direction of ocean currents, the spinnaker boom of a yacht, the jib-boom of a staunch cutter.  Once there was a goodly hammer cemented by the head fast upright on a flat rock, and again the stand of a grindstone, and a trestle, high and elaborately stayed.  Cases, invariably and disappointingly empty, come and go, planks of strange timber, blocks from some tall ship.  A huge black beacon waddled along, dragging a reluctant mass of iron at the end of its chain cable, followed by a roughly-built “flatty” and a huge log of silkwood.  A jolly red buoy, weary of the formality of bowing to the swell, broke loose from a sandbank’s apron-strings, bounced off in the ecstasies of liberty, romped in the surf, rolled on the beach, worked a cosy bed in the soft warm sand, and has slumbered ever since to the soothing hum of the wind, indifferent to the perplexities of mariners and the fate of ships.  The gilded masthead truck of a smart yacht, with one of her cabin racks, bespoke of recent disaster, unknown and unaccounted, and a brand new oar, finished and fitted with the nattiness of a man-o’-war’s man, told of some wave-swept deck.