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We came back upcountry  glad to be settled again and this time with  all the attendant trappings of a large 5 bedroom bungalow, large garden and masses of outbuildings. It was wonderful to return to my childhood home but now as a senior manager.  Over the previous 60 years the Estate had been well managed by a succession of  four outstanding planters starting with the pioneer Fred Whitall, then my Father, our cousin Freddie Keun, Tim Wilson and John Holland.  Also I now had the use of a powerful long wheel base Land Rover with a detachable hard top. To be able to savour the glorious view sweeping down from its 4,750 ft height down to the Welimada plain 1,500 ft below and in the far distance see the long flat Haputale range, and further southwards the 7000 ft Horton Plains was breathtaking.  It was a sight that used to overwhelm any new visitor, yet this was now to be our future home. The climate too was was far easier and cooler than Hugoland never exceeding even on the  very  hottest days more than 73F in the shade and rarely did it fall much below 50F. The rainfall too was much higher, three times the amount at Hugoland in the valley at an average of 120” a  year. The clouds would build up over and sweep down from the Buffaloes Hump and next there would be an unbelievable torrent drumming down on the corrugated iron roof with a noise that deafened conversation whilst  it was in full swing. The condition of the Estate however had rather drifted since John Holland had left nine months before. Peter Perera  father’s old conductor had acted there keeping it ticking over, but everything had started to slide, particularly the tea prices. So from the business point of view that was my top priority. Within a month I had sacked the slack and lazy teamaker,  as it was a simple question of  either it was his job or mine. In his place I persuaded Mac’s first Assistant Mr Santosam a wiry South Indian Christian Tamil whose name meant ‘a gift’,  and  who was a bubbly active  personality to join me. He was constantly on the go and extremely innovative and highly intelligent although inclined to be quarrelsome. Within a couple of months the market noticed the changes and we were achieving with a third more value for our teas than hitherto and we became the second highest priced tea in the whole of Ceylon. As  the estate  swung heavily into the black there was now far more cash for fertilizers etc and far more work and overtime for the labour who instinctively gave me their fullest co-operation seeing their monetary rewards  enhanced. Soon we were on an active upward spiral which over the next few years was to make me the highest paid planter in the island running the most profitable two properties. A year after coming to Luckyland I was offered my first Visiting Agents or consultants post with a small antiquated property called Ohiya Estate with tea  rising to 7,000 ft. It was so cold there the first time I went, that I had to place the carpet on my bed as an extra eiderdown. This was followed by my next permanent assignment at Glenanore Estate, a magnificent 800 acre property at Haputale at an elevation of about 5,000ft. The problem here was the manager who was a fifty year old Scot called Jimmy MacClochlan a stocky bald headed man who enjoyed his scotch, and  who did  not want to take kindly to an energetic  young upstart put in to get things moving. . However we soon had a very good rapport, and he would tell me off all the problems that he was having with his teenage daughter in England, largely he said because of the family being so split up with him working out East, whilst his wife trying to keep a second home going with the family. Although they flew out a lot it was not the same and each did not seem to understand the other. I could sympathise with his sadness having been brought up in a similar way myself and so we each  understood each others problems. When I finally left Ceylon I was most touched when he thanked me for the way we had worked together and he gave me a most beautiful Mother of Pearl oyster shell which he had got in the war from Tahiti which I still have in our sitting room.  

The  whole of the  large bungalow at Luckyland was given a face lift, the vast rooms all re-decorateded and Jill would spend days in Colombo buying the best Fifth Avenue furnishing fabrics to add maximum style to the home. I quickly planted all the new fruit trees, and as they took hold, and for absolute certainty I grafted slips of the trees I had brought  onto the poor local stock of the same varieties. The fertile eggs that we had brought out caused a peculiar problem. When they came to hatch from the incubator about four dozen chicks appeared, but each one had a hernia, from the yolk cord with the intestines falling out because  the stomach cavity  was  incompletely closed. I was really upset given all the trouble that we had gone to in bringing them out, and so in desperation I took Jill’s  coarsest knitting needle and poked the guts of each chick  back into the stomach cavity, and then with a bit of cotton soaked in mild  dettol  disinfectant, I stitched  up each in turn. The results of my crude surgery were miraculous and everyone survived and flourished. There is nothing like living in the back of beyond to make one adaptable in all aspects of life!  Socially   we were now on the edge of one of the major planting districts and not so completely isolated as before and our  life became much more active in entertaining and parties than hitherto. As immediate neighbours we had an unpleasant bully running Allagolla as Charlie Paterson had retired. He was Conway Davis who being some thirty years my senior thought that he had some prescriptive right to push me  around. We had to share quite a lot of facilities such as the medical dispensary and hospital, as well as the road system of the two properties were intertwined with Allagolla sitting between the Luckyland main divisions. After one or two bust ups, I eventually asked him not to deal with me direct but to address any complaints via George Steuart ‘s in Colombo. As he had previously worked for them, and they knew his reputation, his letters hit the buffers and soon petered out, after which he  became quite civil knowing that he had met his match.   At the end of July our third child Paul  was born. He had been conceived in Mother’s lovely home at Buxted at a time when we were all settled,  at the end of a glorious summer. For Jill there were this time no traumas like my accident, to have to cope with, and she for her part had now fitted in well into the Ceylon life. We had recruited a new burgher nanny called Gertie who was a pretty chatty lass escaping from a drunken husband who worked at the Ceylon Brewery.  Paul was an outstandingly pretty baby, but his arrival though was a  bit traumatic for me personally. As soon as the due date arrived and the first signs,  I drove her over to the Hatton Home and stayed with my friend David Hart at a nearby estate. During the night there was a tremendous storm which had brought down all the telephone wires, which made it  impossible to telephone, so I drove over early next morning expecting to see the new baby delivered, but instead saw poor Jill standing at the top of the drive still waiting and with occasional  labour pangs, feeling very bored and frustrated. I asked her if she would like to go for a drive and she agreed, to relieve the hanging around. We drove down to the nearby Castlereagh Dam which had just been completed, flooding the valley below. I drove slowly and quietly looking at the scenery and every few minutes stopping for her to have a rest. But then horror of horrors I  was now on the opposite side to Hatton, and  the maze of estate roads  had been flooded and it was impossible to find a route that did not end up in the lake. Meanwhile the labour pains were  becoming increasingly frequent  and I was sweating  thinking that I may have to perform the delivery myself, by a tea bush ,when I tried a last attempt  on a road and headed in the opposite direction  and  half an hour later we were safely back at the nursing home,  and Paul was delivered  about  an hour or so later to my intense relief. Jill found him easy in temperament, and also easy in that he was only one born instead of twins. With  a young crowd and others in the neighbourhood she was never lonely. Most mornings she devoted to nursery classes for Peter and Janet and a year after we had arrived in January, we had at last a visit from her Mother  Sybil, to savour our  colonial life with her rather ascerbic eye.  Jill also had a very brief three day hectic visit from her aunt Nancy en route to Australia. She arrived at the airport at about 9 o’clock at night in a drenching South West Storm. I decided that to save time we would take a back road to spend 1/5 Next Page.

Ma & family Nilaveli 1961

Sunderland Flying Boat, Trinco.

 

1956.