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Fragments of an autobiography - Part III-by Prof. P.G. Cooray
Geological mapping of Sri Lanka: 1952-1966
At a Departmental staff meeting soon after I returned, it was decided that we should begin systematic mapping of the geology of the island on the scale of 1 inch = 1 mile, using the excellent topographical maps that were available at the time; and that a beginning should be made by determining the boundary between the Charnockite Metasedimentary Series in the centre of the island and the Vijayan Series to the east of it.

Now began one of the most rewarding periods of my professional life, during which time I mapped the Rangala sheet during some months of the years 1953-1957, and the Galgamuwa sheet on the other side of the island in other months of the years 1952-1957, depending on the rainfall seasons of each. Between 1956 and 1959, I mapped the Alutgama sheet, the Battulo Oya and Puttalam sheets between 1963 and 1964, and parts of the Hatton sheet in 1965-66, making a total of almost 2000 sq. miles mapped by me.

Camping in the field was an essential part of field work in those days, and I did so sometimes alone, sometimes with Joan, and after 1956, sometimes with baby Shantini. Our first experience of camping was an unforgettable one when we learned a basic lesson about camping. We chose the only bit of flat land available in the Rangala area, which was in a gap, set up our tents, and in the evening had the tent flap open and the Tilley lamp hanging at the entrance to the tent, while we sat outside. When we retired for the night, however, we found to our horror that there were hundreds of moths inside the tent, drawn to it by the light, and sleep was very difficult that first night. Needless to say, we never made that mistake again! Another time, I must have knocked against a nest of jungle ticks when walking in the forest, and the next thing I knew was that there were ticks all over the tent. I had to pick them out and destroy them one by one before I could continue to live in the tent.

When I was mapping in the Madulkele area, we camped on the edge of the grounds of the Madulkele Club, and through the kindness of the members, were able to use the toilet facilities of the club. Our camp overlooked a small valley which was inhabited by a flock of golden orioles, and the sight of them flying from one side of the valley to the other was an unforgettable one. It was during this time that I met Reggie Walker, who was planting in that area, and many years later, when we returned to Sri Lanka and bought a house in the Mahakanda area, Reggie was our neighbour and I often spent time chatting with him about those Madulkele days.

On one occasion I had to map an area across the Mahaweli Ganga, so I drove down to Weragantota, left the car in the Rest House, and crossed over to the other side by ferry (this was before the bridge was built). My camp attendant and I had to walk about six miles north through the forest to the village where I hoped to spend about a week mapping an area that was rather inaccessible. One unforgettable sight on that walk was of an Indian paradise flycatcher, with its long white tail (locally known as lensu hora) flying across the path just in front of us. I camped in the village school, but all we could get to eat was breadfruit. After a few days of that as my staple food, morning, noon and night, I felt I'd had enough, so we walked back, crossed the river again, and drove back to Colombo. On another occasion I drove round to the other side and mapped the area around Dambane in the company of Allan Caldera, the veteran geography teacher. We had a couple of Veddahs as guides on that trip, and I remember trying to shoot down a couple of green pigeons (batagoyas) with Allan's gun, but without success.

My most unpleasant experience in the field was being stung by a swarm of bees when I broke a piece of rock from an outcrop where they had their nest. I had to run for my life and throw myself under a stream of water flowing over an embankment until they went away! Our friend Norman Schokman, whom I had known when he was a police officer in Ratnapura (and whose son Larry was recently in the news as the Keeper of the Tropical Botanical Gardens in Florida), came down with Monica, his wife, and took us to their home, where I spent a couple of days until the fever left me.

One day when I was mapping on one of the Knuckles Group of estates in the Madulkele area, I noticed a young, teenage Indian boy watching me. He came up to me and asked me what I was doing and I explained to him that I was looking at pieces of rock with my hand lens, identifying them and marking them on the geological map that I was making. He seemed interested, but I thought nothing of it at the time. Then several years later I had a card from a Nick Money from Oxford, saying that I had introduced him to geology and that he was reading for a geology degree at the University! After graduation Nick joined the British Geological Survey, was sent out to Zambia to the Geological Survey there, and ended up as Director of the Zambia Geological Survey. We became friends with his family during our years in Zambia, and we have remained close friends since then.

In 1956 I led the Knuckles Scientific Expedition, which was a great success, and much has been written about it (see, for example, "The Knuckles Massif - A Portfolio", published by the Forest Department in 1998). I should mention that of the Expedition team, Prof. B.A. Abeywickrema and journalist Cecil Wikramanayake are still here with us, and geographers Sydney Perera and Dave Erb are still living, the former in the UK and the other in Canada. We began our expedition from Mimure on the eastern side of the Massif, and ended it at Nick Money's father's house on the other side of the Massif.

Galgamuwa sheet
Mapping of the Galgamuwa sheet was also an exciting and rewarding experience as it gave me the opprtunity to make a detaied study of the Tonigala Granite, see the famous Tonigala inscription, and climb several inselbergs in the area, I was once camping in the school at Anamaduwa in the fifties, then a village of a few scattered buildings on the road from Kurunegala to Puttalam. My camp attendant on that occasion was Banda, who had been trained by Wadia to be a 'pukka' camp attendant. After about two days I found that the bottle of methylated spirit, which was used to light to Tilley Lamp, had gone down considerably. On questioning Banda I discovered that he had been helping himself to the spirit during the day, and so was in a daze by evening. I had no alternative but to send him back immediately and had to feed myself until his replacement arrived a few days later.

Alutgama, Battulu Oya and Puttalam sheets
After Ranagala and Galgamuwa I was assigned the Alutgama sheet, and one evening when I was sitting outside my tent which happened to be close to the main Galle Road, Rodney Jonklaas saw me, and stopped for a chat. After a little while he went into the sea and came out with a large lobster in each hand, one of which I had for a very delicious dinner! I also mapped part of the Hatton Sheet and my last two full sheets were the Battulu Oya and Puttalam sheets. Mapping these areas introduced me to the sedimentary rocks laid down during the last 1.6 million years of the island's geological history, i.e., the Quaternary period, a complete contrast to the crystalline rocks which make up the rest of the island, most of which are more than 2000 million years old. As a result, my interest in the last few years has shifted to the Quaternary geology of Sri Lanka, a much neglected part of our geology.

Imperial College: 1959-1961
In 1959 I was awarded a Colombo Plan Scholarship to go back to Imperial College for my doctorate, which I completed in 1960. It was during those years that Prof. Sutton suggested that I should write a book on the Geology of Ceylon, which I did between 1963 and 1966, and it was published by the National Museums Department in 1967. Among my contemporaries at IC at that time was John Dewey, until recently Professor of Geology at Oxford, and one of the leading proponents of plate tectonics and also an enthusiastic cricketer!

In 1960 I attended the International Geological Congress in Copenhagen, and before the Congress I went on a pre Congress Excursion across South Sweden, where I saw some spectacular results of the Great Ice Age in Western Europe. After the Congress we went to Finland, where we were looked after by Vladi Marmo of the Geological Survey of Finland, with whom I had corresponded about granites, met his nice family, and were taken on a field trip to the Tampere Belt, where again I saw rocks I had heard about but never seen before.

Sri Lanka: 1961-1966
In 1962 my parents celebrated their Golden Wedding Anniversary, but my father passed away the following year. He was always a lover of Malaysia, where he had spent the best part of his life as a professional journalist, and he insisted on visiting that country again in 1963. There he suffered a severe stroke and died. I visited him in hospital before he died, but he kept asking for my brother Dodwell. His remains were buried in the General Cemetery in Kuala Lumpur.

During my years in the Geological Survey, we formed the Ananda Coomaraswamy Geological Club, membership of which was open to anyone interested in geology.
We had a large, keen membership and went on a number of interesting field excursions, one of which was to the Bogala graphite mine. We had a regular newsletter, and many amusing and entertaining contributions were made to it by one of our keenest members, P. Sithamparapillai, who migrated to Canada and died there a few years ago. The ACGC lasted for some years, but collapsed when those responsible for running it lost interest.

Towards the latter part of this period I became somewhat disgruntled with my position in the GSD, having been overlooked for promotion for some reason or other and I started to look for a place abroad. Sometime in 1965 I was in correspondence with Professor Oyawoye, Head of the Geology Department at Ibadan University in Nigeria, about charnockites in which we were both interested. In one of my letters I mentioned that I was looking for a job abroad, and he sent me an advertisement for a senior lecturer in geology in the University of Ife in Nigeria.

I applied for the post, but heard nothing for many months. Then suddenly in 1966 I received a letter of appointment to the post, and learnt later that Hugh Balmond, whom I had known in my Colombo Varsity days, had been appointed Registrar of that university, and had found my application in a drawer at the bottom of a pile of papers! Knowing me personally he had taken the step of appointing me.

And so we decided to go to Nigeria, but when I asked to be allowed to retire from the Government service under the language concession, as I knew no Sinhala, permission was refused. I had no alternative but to resign from my post after nearly 20 years of unstinted service, without a pension.

We sailed for Nigeria in December 1966, to a completely new way of life as an academic, which took up the next 20 years of my life.

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