province that was to be our home for the rest of our days in Ceylon.  Uva is without a doubt the most beautiful of all the Ceylon provinces. It is dominated in the far east by the spectacular sheer sided peak of Namanakula which at 6,500 ft towers above most of the surrounding country that is less than half this height. To either side  after a series of low colls are the distant ranges of Madulsima and Haputale, both very fine tea growing areas with fine soils.
In between was the Welimada plain also about 3,000 ft high where our Estate of Hugoland was situated, sitting atop of two hillocks with all the sinhalese villages, paddy fields and vegetable  lands about. All around on the scrub uncultivated land was the native mannah or lemon grass which gives an all pervasive subtle scent to the countryside. Also wild everywhere is lantana , a coarse prickly shrub  introduced from  Australia  with an orange or pink flower head and a blackberry shaped fruit cluster and with a pungently characteristic odour.  Soon we were at the pretty Hugoland bungalow driving up the yellow cassia drive through the red bouganvillea arches to our journeys end, and her first view of her new home in the middle of this strange but beautiful country. I showed her around and introduced her to the servants, Perian the Cook, Velaithan the cross eyed house boy, and Wilbert the Sinhalese gardener, and then  a welcome cup of our own tea  before unpacking and settling quietly in.
After Breakfast I took Jill round the Estate to meet all the staff at the factory, so that she got used to the glorious fresh tangy smell of tea being made and newly fired. To hear the steady thump of the Ruxton Hornsby single cylinder diesel engine that in those days powered all the machinery, such as the tea rollers, sifters, driers and fans to name but a few. And then we drove all over the maze of little roads, over our swing bridge suspended precariously on steel ropes, and through the Sinhalese villages, stopping everywhere to introduce and receive all the warm expressions of courtesy, respect and love from all these simple folk amongst whom she would be treated like a queen in our small locality.   
It was less than a week that we stayed at Hugoland and then we and Father all went and spent a fairly boring Christmas for a couple of days in Kandy at the Queen’s Hotel where we were joined by his business partner Dorothy Gordon. She was a most formidable character, an Australian from Buderrim in Queensland. She had passed through Ceylon as so many Australian girls did  in the first half on the century en route to England and broken her journey with a sojurn upcountry where she had met and married Hugh Gordon who was a half owner of Luckyland Estate and had backed Father to open Hugoland Estate which bore his name. Dorothy in her youth was a wonderful tennis player and was renowned that when she had won her match would leap with a cartwheel over the net.
Hugh her husband was a most quiet and charming and intelligent man, quite the opposite of the bundle of energy and vivacousness that he had married. He and Father got on wonderfully together. Hugh was a great man on ideas and suggestions and a wonderful organiser and  wealthy as well. He was impressed by Fathers boundless energy and drive and when Father suggested opening up a new estate in the relatively dry Welimada plain, he firmly backed the project. They were a childless couple and in his later years Hugh was crippled with the most acute form of Rheumatoid Arthritis that I had ever seen. He used to come to Luckyland and would hobble around on crutches with his fingers all gnarled and twisted with the appalling disease which eventually killed him shortly after the war.
Dorothy after his death took the keenest interest  in the Estates. She was the dowager duchess  of her District of Bogawantalawa where she lived in the most sumptuous style laying on spectacular dinner parties and presiding like a distant mother over all the young assistants in the district. Above all she was particularly good at integrating the ever increasing young  Sinhalese from good families into the etiquette of tea planting so that they could hold their own in what was very much  an English public school society. She swore that she would never ever leave Ceylon as she wished to be buried when her time came, next to Hugh in Bogawantalawa churchyard, a  wish which decades later was carried out.  Dorothy in spite of her outspokenness and directness was a great friend, and she instantly took a great liking to Jill as like her she was so unpretentious but wanted to succeed in this new exotic environment. Our wedding was finally set for the 5th January 1955 at the little church of Ragalla which was just over the stream from the grand bungalow where I had done my creeping with Ronald and Joyce Williams.

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