TO US A SON WAS BORN.

     It is Christmas day here in Australia (Christmas eve in the US of A) and, as once again, we celebrate the birth of the Christ child two thousand years ago, I find I cannot shut my mind off to a time of great consequence in my life 40 years ago. 

   Here is my recollection of those times and  events that led up to the birth of my only son, Wayne:

   Denise, my wife of six years, was in an advanced state of her pregnancy when I took her to our family doctor for her monthly check up.

     A few moments after she went in to be examined, the doctor came out and called me into the room. He sat me down and said, “Desmond, Denise, I don"t want to alarm you but I have some news for you that might - just might - surprise you! I cannot be too certain about this -  but I think you may have to prepare for the arrival of twins!”  Then, sensing that I was getting a bit agitated, he said "It's just too early to tell for sure but  I think I heard two heartbeats coming from the womb! Don't get too excited about it just now as we will know for certain one way or another next month!"

   Don't get excited? Well, Denise certainly did! She went straight to her seamstress and ordered another two dozen nappies (no disposable diapers back then) in addition to her previous order!

    Meanwhile, I was feeling very nervous wondering if the wife and I were really up to taking on the huge task of looking after twins! However, at the next doctor's appointment we were told to expect one baby! Needles to say, my fears were allayed but Denise was rather disappointed She had told me that she had been delighted at the prospect of  having twins because she would then be the first person in both our family circles that was going to have that privilege! But with the arrival of our boy  on 7th May, two days before the celebration of my 34th birthday, her disappointment evaporated altogether! She was ecstatic!

     The third generation firstborn Lockhart with the same first name was christened Edward Desmond Wayne at the Church of St. Paul, Milagiriya, Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Elephant vs Crocodile

                                                     Saturday 4th Dec. 2010

    Recently I received some amazing pictures forwarded to me by my sister, Dianne. They were of a drama as it unfolded in an African National Park; the escape of a elephant from a crocodile that got hold of its trunk and tried to drag it into water.

    It reminded me of a day about 50 years ago when working with the Smithsonian wildlife research team, I  witnessed a very strange  encounter between an elephant and crocodile at Marai Villu, Wilpattu N.P. in Sri Lanka.

    It was the middle of  a very hot day when I saw a herd of elephants approach from the far side of the villu. As they saw the water they broke into an ambling run heading straight for it. There were about a dozen crocs sunning themselves on the bank and as the elephants thundered towards them they made a beeline for the water. The adult elephants came on ahead of  the babies and all the crocs got out of their way except for one that was strangely slow - slow enough to collect  a hefty kick from the lead elephant! The reptile got lifted off the ground in a cloud of sand and mud, landed at the water's edge and quickly disappeared.

    Crocodiles are torpedo-swift in water and they're certainly not sluggish out of it! And so I wondered why this particular croc was so slow getting out of the way of a thirsty  elephant heading for water. The conclusion I came to was that this reptile had probably had a nasty battle with one of it's own and had come away second best having been rendered lame.

    I wrote about this incident in The Sunday Times of Ceylon together with a black and white sketch.

A Man, a Boy and a Donkey.

                                                     November 8th 2010

    I had a friend send me the following a few weeks ago. As you know, it's an old Aesop's fable and you may have seen this or other versions of it before. But what you don't know is an episode from my past that I've written about which you'll find at the bottom...

                  --------------------0----------------------

An old man, a boy & a donkey were going to town. The boy rode on the donkey & the old man walked. As they went along they passed some people who remarked it was a shame the old man was walking & the boy was riding
The man & boy thought maybe the critics were right, so they changed positions.
Later, they passed some people that remarked, "What a shame, he makes that little boy walk."
They then decided they both would walk! Soon they passed some more people who thought they were stupid to walk when they had a decent donkey to ride. So, they both rode the donkey.
Now they passed some people that shamed them by saying how awful to put such a load on a poor donkey.
The boy & man said they were probably right, so they decide to carry the donkey.  As they crossed the bridge, they lost their grip on the animal & he fell into the river and drowned.

The moral of the story?

    This, you’ll agree, is a rather asinine one: 

If you try to please everyone, you might as well...
Kiss your ass good-bye

    The proper one should read:

You may fool some of the people for some of the time; all of the people for some of the time but never all of the people all of the time!

                     --------------0---------------

 Back when I was in kindergarten, I remember having to take part in a play which was a Sinhalese version of this story. Yes, you guessed it!! I was the donkey; chosen, for, among other damned good reasons, because I was the tallest in the class and therefore my shorter classmates could ride me with their legs off the ground! I had to wear a  papier mache donkey's head and grey blanket. As the story unfolded, I had to walk back and forth across the stage on my hands and knees. I knew my parents were in the audience and to catch a glimpse of them I had to swing my head from side to side in order to be able to see through the two little holes in the mask.

When I got home my father commented on this: “You were the perfect donkey!” he said, “You were even tossing your head to and fro to shake off the flies!" I thought that was a great compliment (donkey that I was!) and so did not explain the real reason for those jerky movements of the head!

That was my one and only Thespian assignment. I must admit, though, to having acted the ass many times as an adult. However – thank God - I believe I haven’t made many enemies and so haven’t had to watch my ass!

PROMISES, PROMISES…

      As a boy, I cared more for sport than I did for my studies and as a result my school reports showed me to be an average student. However, my parents thought that I had the potential to do much better in the classroom than on the sports field. So one day, Dad promised to give me a pushbike if I came first in my class. I took him at his word and devoted more time to my studies than ever before.

    That year I did come first!

    One of the traditional rituals at Kingswood College, Sri Lanka was the  “ducking” of boys who reached the top of their class and so I had to walk home soaking wet! How can I forget?

    I waited with bated breath for my bike and I’m still waiting!

    As you can imagine, this was one hell of a disappointment for me and the memory of it was burned onto me as with a branding iron. So when I reached years of discretion I promised myself that if ever I was blessed with a child I would make every effort never to break my promises to it. I like to think I never did!

     Years later my only son, Wayne promised me “the time of my life”- all expenses paid— if I visited him in America and in 2005 he delivered on his promise!

      He made the two weeks I stayed with him and Andrea the most memorable of my entire life. I guess what goes around does indeed come around!!

     I remember reading somewhere that “Between today and tomorrow are graves, and between promising and fulfilling are chasms.”

A DEVIL OF AN EXPERIENCE!

It was the most bloodcurdling scream I had ever heard! I lay wide awake in my bed at the Inginiyagala Rest House shuddering in fear. The piercing sound was that of a woman being strangled and it seemed to be coming from the room at the end of the row in which I had the middle one. Somebody’s being attacked in that room, I thought, there’s a maniac in the place! Then, in the chilling silence that followed  I suddenly felt a desperate need to protect myself. I got up as quietly as I could and reached for my hunting knife in the bedside locker!

After a very hard afternoon of trekking in the Galoya National Park I had returned to the Rest House dead tired. Then, refreshed after a shower and sumptuous dinner, I sat down at a table in the verandah outside my room to write my notes for the day before hitting the sack.

I don’t know how long it was after I fell asleep that something woke me up and it was just as I was dozing off again that I heard that awful scream.

Clutching the knife I sat on the bed and waited for some lights to come on. Surely, I thought, that loud, eerie sound would most certainly cause a stir in the place. But no, just darkness and dead silence!

I  began to wonder if what I thought I heard was just part of a bad dream. I was so shaken by the experience that I got up, switched the light on in my room and reached for the bottle of arrack on the locker. After a couple of large swigs I was able to summon up enough courage to go out on the dark verandah to see if I could find something to explain that horrible scream.

After a few moments I heard it again! This time that awful sound came from a distance, way off in a patch of jungle opposite the Rest House. And then it dawned on me that what I heard was the cry of the Ulama or Devil Bird, a cryptid of the Sri Lankan jungles. It has never been positively identified and is most likely a nocturnal bird of prey like an owl.

I looked at my watch and saw that it was just after 2.00 am. Suddenly I felt very stupid standing there with perspiration oozing from me and still holding the hunting knife!  Returning to the room, I took a short shower and slipped back into bed. But so thoroughly unnerving was the experience of hearing the eerie cries of the Ulama that I just couldn't go back to sleep.

Even to this day the very memory of those unearthly screams in the night gives me goose bumps!

A RARE PICTURE

Here is a rare photograph of the Lockhart siblings together. This shot was taken with a Brownie box camera over fifty years ago.

That's me on the left then Melvyn, Dianne, Hermoine and Windsor.We were on holiday at our uncle Ern’s property, a coconut estate known as Wehera in Kurunegala

Unfortunately the opportunity for another photograph like this can never present itself again: Mel passed away in 2005. He was five years younger than me. May his soul rest in peace…                             

SWORN ENEMIES.

The leopard appeared from a patch of jungle about 300 yards from me loping downhill and  heading in my direction! Behind the cat was a water buffalo bull in hot pursuit. When both animals were about 150 yards from me they both disappeared down a dip in the ground and then emerged on a ridge with the leopard making for an outcrop of rock about 75 yards from me and to my right. Then, getting to a high point it stopped and looked down at the buffalo which was having difficulty climbing up behind it.

It was a very hot afternoon and I was on the edge of clump of tall trees in the Galoya National Park. Before me was a large open area where I had often observed herds of elephants feeding. I had begun to look over the place with my binoculars, when I heard langurs giving out alarm calls that told of the presence of a leopard in the vicinity. The calls came from jungle directly in front of me. It was just as I focused my attention on this spot that the leopard and buffalo came into view. A few yards behind came a small herd of about twenty adult and juvenile buffaloes.These animals pulled up soon after breaking cover allowing the leading animal to get on with the chase alone.

From where it stood on the rock the leopard turned around, looked down and snarled at the buffalo as it tried awkwardly to climb after it. The cat then leapt down making straight for thick jungle about 100 yards away. It appeared to be in no hurry, striding leisurely along. It was as if it knew that the buffalo would have trouble climbing down and going round the rock to continue the chase. With the buffalo closing the gap between them, the leopard disappeared into the jungle.

There followed a loud crashing as the buffalo burst through the thick cover, then silence for a few moments before the big bull emerged with vines and creepers entangled in its horns. It stood there for a minute or so looking around for his herd then, when he saw where they were, he shook his head and snorted as if to say, “I gave the bugger heaps!” The bull then trotted up and rejoined the herd after which all the animals started calmly moving back to from where they came.

I had no doubt that the  leopard would have got away safely by climbing a tree so I stayed where I was for about half and hour hoping it would come back into the open but it didn’t show up.

PERFECT CAMOUFLAGE

Here is a picture I took of a lizard on the trunk of a bottlebrush on the footpath in front of my home in Kippa Ring. It  was taken with a Canon PowerShot A400 on the afternoon of the 1st February 2008.

The Galoya National Park & the Senanayake Samudra

The Galoya National Park came into being in 1954 and was administered by the Galoya Development Board until 11 years later The Department of Wildlife Conservation took over. The park covers an area of 198 square miles in the dry zone southeast of the island of Sri Lanka. It was established for the purpose of protecting the catchment area which came to be known as the Senanayake Samudra. This, the largest reservoir in the country was named after Don Stephen Senanayake, Sri Lanka’s (then Ceylon) first Prime Minister and Minister of External Affairs.

It was his idea for the construction of a dam to be built at Inginiyagala that eventually resulted in the flooding of the Galoya Valley and the creation of a body of water with a surface area of 7680 ha.

The building of the dam was undertaken by the American construction company, Morrison-Knudsen and was a multi-purpose project similar to the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA).

The reservoir is as deep as 100 feet in some places and has several small islands which are the tops of the hills that were once a part of the landscape of the Galoya Valley before it was inundated. In shallower spots the trunks and branches of dead trees rise from the surface to provide perches for several species of waterbirds.

The park is a sanctuary for many species of animals including elephant, leopard, buffalo, bear and crocodile.

LEVIATHANS OF THE DEEP

Alone on an outrigger canoe in the middle of the Senanayake Samudra, Sri Lanka’s largest reservoir, I was transfixed by a strange sight. About two miles from the closest land there was what appeared to be a crow treading water! As I watched, it took off every now and then to a height of a few feet before landing back on precisely the same spot. I decided that there had to be something solid like a floating log the bird was alighting on. But on approaching the spot I found it to be the carcase of a giant catfish. It was about 8 feet in length. The massive body was deeply scarred indicative of an attack by a crocodile. The crow had been feeding on this carcase tearing off chunks then flying up whenever the floating dinner dipped gently below the surface.

It was my first sight of a giant catfish and, up to then, didn’t know they existed in this reservoir. Weeks later I was to see another - also dead and bearing scars that told of an attack by a large predator like a crocodile.

Back in the 1960s I was working as technical assistant to a team of wildlife researchers from the Smithsonian Institution, USA.  Based in Inginiyagala, my work took me to almost every nook and cranny of the huge national park that bordered the Senanyake Samudra. The park was the newest in the country and was not developed. The only road into the park was a dirt track that only went about half a mile then petered out into thick jungle. All the fieldwork here had to be done on foot and so I had many exciting and a few hair-raising encounters with wild animals.

In the initial stages of the research project we had to hire an outrigger canoe from fishermen to get across large stretches of water. Often I was left to do the fieldwork by myself and it was on one such occasion that I came upon the crow feasting on a floating catfish. A few months later the project acquired a small boat and outboard motor.

One day, while walking with a researcher along the bank of the reservoir, we rounded a bend and were startled by a scuffling sound in the bushes. Looking up we saw two mongooses rush out of a huge hole in the carcase of a giant catfish. We could see that this monster was the victim of a clash with a crocodile and had been washed up on the shore some days earlier. This fish was not as large as the one I saw floating on the water; only about 6 foot long but large enough for the mongooses to creep inside its body and feast on its innards! The stench of the rotting fish was overpowering and the flies were swarming in their millions! So after my companion had taken some photographs, having laid his binoculars close to the carcase for size comparison, we beat a hasty retreat!

In future posts I shall write more about the Senayake Samudra, the Galoya National Park and my experiences in Inginiyagala.

A man I’m sorry I never got to know.

My father-in-law, Charles Weinman, was one of the finest gentleman I’ve ever had the good fortune to know. He was also one of the most intelligent men anyone could hope to meet in a day’s march.

As a teenager, I fell hopelessly in love with his daughter, Denise. Then, when after a fairly lengthy courtship, I wrote to Charles asking for the hand of his only daughter in marriage, his reply was brief and sententious. Giving his consent, he replied, "I don’t intend this to be a homily. Both of you are well in command of your senses to make the right decisions…” I was twenty seven and Denise was three years younger than me.

Unfortunately Charles didn’t live long enough to see his grandson, Wayne, who arrived a couple of years after the Old Man passed away.

Another grandfather whose life span was too short to afford him the opportunity to rejoice in the birth of what was to be his only granddaughter, Denise, was Dr. Weinman. I do not remember his given name/names but I do remember Charles telling me that his father was “of Jewish extract”. Certainly, the name (pronounced ‘whyman’) suggests that this would have been so..

One of my greatest regrets in this regard is that I didn’t have the curiosity and perhaps the downright impudence, as a young man, to pick the brains of my elders, long and hard, so that I may be privy to some very interesting and useful information about family history that I would have been able to pass on to the generation that has succeeded mine. However, whether in this day and age, that generation would consider any such information valuable is a moot point!

 

This is a photograph of the late Dr. Weinman, the oldest  I have of any family member, living or dead – a man I never got to know.

The Drumstick Tree

On the 16th October 2009 I came across a very interesting article on the murunga tree, also known as the drumstick tree, at http://badusure.com/murunga and submitted the following comment and, since then, it’s been “awaiting  moderation” – whatever that means!

I have a rather interesting childhood memory which I recount here for whatever it’s worth.
 

I remember that back in the 1940s, poultry in  large areas of Sri Lanka, (then Ceylon) including Kandy where I was raised, were affected by an epidemic which, I guess, could best be described as a form of bird flu. Infected chickens would cough violently, be unable to eat and die in a day or  two. My maternal grandmother treated our sick birds with an ayurvedic medicine made of the bark of the murunga tree ground up into a paste with ginger and garlic. She made little pellets of the stuff and hand fed them to the birds as soon as they began to show symptoms of the disease. I did some hand feeding too and nearly all of the treated chickens survived. I might add that not only does Murunga grow well in Sri Lanka and other Asian countries, they do well in Australia too! Just at this time of the year murunga trees in Australia bear fruit and friends who have trees in Queensland tell me they are laden..

Footnote: I reckon I should have substituted force fed for hand fed.

Greetings!

My name is Des.