Dear Patricia and Susan
In the St John’s College magazine I read with great sadness of Michael’s death. Michael and I entered St John’s on the same day, read for the same degree under the same tutor (Willy Holmes) and graduated at the same time. We shared a natural-history interest. Towards the end of our first term we began to talk about undertaking an ‘expedition’ to somewhere interesting and to enjoy the fun of almost-adult independence. My uncle, then Chief Game Warden of Kenya, suggsted the far north coast of Kenya as biologically relatively poorly known. That suggestion morphed into the Second (there had been an earlier) Oxford Expedition to the Kiunga Archipelago 1961. Jim Gillespie, a botanist, joined us; and a college friend offered to act as our home agent. With some donated food and medical supplies we flew to Africa for the most entertaining end to a first undergraduate year anyone could devise.
The expedition was done on a shoestring, with a lot of local help. Even getting to Kiunga (a tiny coastal village) was fraught. The monsoon has made the roads almost impassable, but we accepted a ride on a Game Department lorry (stacked with fuel drums on which we perched) from Mombasa to Lamu, whence we sailed by dhow to Kiunga. That trip alone taught me a lot about Mike: how physically robust he was, and how patient and cheerful – characteristics that were put to the test again and again. Before the expedition I had not fully realised how well prepared Mike would be. He had read widely about the area’s birdlife and has chosen achievable projects. As a result he returned (eventually) with good data that he processed and published promptly, much to his credit.
The expedition came to and end later than promised (in fact after the second academic year had started back in Oxford) because we had moved inland to an oil-drilling site which, along with all the countryside, became inundated by monsoonal floods. When it became clear that the roads would not re-open for weeks, the oil-drillers arranged by radio for their air-drop supply plane to meet us at a coastal airstrip, if we could get there. So, leavalmost everything for others to send on later, Mike and I made an epic 30-mile walk through floodwaters to the coast. Next day the soles of Mike’s feet peeled off; but the plane collected us and delivered us to civilisation. Mike hitched a list on an RAF flight to Europe; I returned more conventionally; and Willy Holmes saved us from the wrath of the college for being late.
This may read like a self-centred nostalgia trip. But that expedition was so important in forming me, and I hope it was for Mike, too. Ever since that expedition I have thf Mike with huge gratitude and fondness as the ideal companion with whom to share natural history. He was a fine man.