CEYLON SOCIETY OF AUSTRALIA
Keeping our heritage alive. Founded in 1997. Incorporated in Australia
NOTICE OF GENERAL MEETING
The third General Meeting of the Ceylon Society of Australia for 2012 will take place on Sunday 26 August 2012 commencing at 6.30 pm at the Pennant Hills Community Centre, Ramsay Road, Pennant Hills, NSW 2120. Please note the venue. Ramsay Road is off Yarrara Road and the venue is opposite the Pennant Hills Railway Station. Members and their Guests are welcome.
AGENDA
1. Apologies
2. The first speaker will be Raja Bandaranayake, a retired Professor of Anatomy and Medical Education. His talk will be about Roloff Beny, author of Island Ceylon. He has addressed the CSA once before on his first book Betwixt Isles: The Story of the Kandyan Prisoners in Mauritius, and has just published his second book, The Integrated Medical Curriculum (Radcliffe, London). He has lived in Sydney for the past thirty-five years.
Born in Canada, Roloff Beny showed early inclinations towards the arts and photography while still in school. Although he started his professional life as an artist, and took up to photography to capture images for his sketches, he soon became a renowned photographer. Based in Rome he had a particular liking for the Mediterranean Region. Later he focused his photographic volumes on particular countries, amongst which was Ceylon. He was introduced to Ceylon by Rose Macauley, the famous travel writer, whose book, Pleasure of Ruins, took him to many ancient kingdoms, including Ceylon, as he produced one of his earlier photographic volumes by the same name. Greatly enamoured by the country he made a second visit which resulted in the book Island Ceylon.
This talk will address Roloff Beny the man, touch briefly on each of his sixteen photographic volumes and focus particularly on his exploits in Sri Lanka while photographing for Island Ceylon.
3. The next item will be the launch of a book titled A THREE GENERATION TALE by CSA Member, Srini Peries. It is a memoir about her mother, her maternal grandmother and herself. The story is a continuation of her first book, A Gaggle of Aunts. It will be sold at a special introductory price of $10 at the meeting.
4. This will be followed by a talk by Dr Don Wijeratne titled The lighter side of life and customs in Sri Lanka. Life in Sri Lanka and the many customs of the Sri Lankans although practised in all seriousness often have their lighter side. Dr Don Wijeratne will draw from his long experience as a medical practitioner, and from his interaction with family and community in Sri Lanka to talk about the lighter side of life in Sri Lanka.
Dr Don Wijeratne is a family medical practitioner who has been treating patients in Sri Lanka and in Sydney, Australia for over fifty years. Everybody knows Dr Don, and there is hardly anyone from Sri Lanka who has not attended his surgery in Balmain. He is a well known and highly respected member of the Sri Lankan community in Sydney where he was the President of the Sri Lanka Association over thirty years ago. Dr Wijeratne was educated at Ananda College Colombo, and the Ceylon Medical School and lives in St Ives, Sydney.
5. Social
NOTE: After a brief discussion period, the usual Social will be the next item on the agenda. Those who are able to are please requested to bring a plate of non-sweet savoury finger-food. Please avoid cakes with icing as the general preference is for plain cakes, sandwiches and savoury pastries. To avoid duplication of items, please contact our Social Convener, Chandra Senaratne on (02) 9872 6826 . A donation to CSA to help defray meeting costs, which could be made at the meeting, is an alternative.
For details please see the next issue of our Journal, The Ceylankan, which you will receive in early August.
Thiru Arumugam, Hony Secretary, CSA |
