Once upon a Kuala (river mouth)

View of the 'Kuala" or river mouth of the Kemena river
At left is the Melanau fishing village and at right (partially seen) is the original town of Bintulu
Picture shows Bintulu in the early 1960's
Picture credit : Ho Ah Choon, "Sarawak in Pictures 1940's - 1970's "

Bintulu river mouth, left bank facing uptstream.
Pic taken in 2012

 In 1867 an Italian botanist named Odoardo Beccari entered the 'Kuala Bintulu' or the Bintulu river mouth.  He wrote some very valuable information about Bintulu in his book entitled " Wanderings in the Great Forests of Borneo".   It was  a memorable time because in that year too the first Council Negeri meeting was held in Bintulu.  The meeting marked the early beginnings of democratic government in Sarawak.  As a young boy in the 1960's I used to go for afternoon walks from the town to the Kuala to enjoy the sea breeze and sunset with my grandpa. The river mouth played a very important role in Bintulu history for it was the main gateway for goods and people to reach Bintulu or to go out of Bintulu. For instance, Beccari wrote in 1867 that the Melanaus were fishermen but a great number of them were engaged in sago making.  Beccari noted that the Bintulu sago is one of the finest quality and is in great request even in Sarawak.  The importance of the Kuala diminished with the construction of a federal port at Tg. Kidurong some 40 kilo meters north of the Bintulu town  starting in 1979..  Today only small coastal boats and ships, tugboats, timber barges and fishing vessels use the Kuala for their importing or exporting of goods.

Pic shows the Melanau fishing boat called "Barong" sailing into the river mouth.
At right can be seen three buildings. The long one is the government boat shed, the  middle building is my classroom when I was at Primary Four, St. Anthony School in 1962.

My male classmates in group photo with our teacher Hasseri Lias who taught us for a short period as a trainee teacher from  Batu Lintang Teacher Training College ,Kuching.  At the background is the government boat shed.  At the left background is partly seen the government wharf.
Photo taken on 14th June, 1962.  I am at the extreme right, front row.

The right bank of the river (going out to sea)...is now developed into the longest waterfront in Sarawak having a total length of 4 kilometers.
Picture taken in July, 2013.

 I have fond memories of Kuala Bintulu because as a young student of St. Anthony School in 1962, one year before Sarawak formed Malaysia,  we studied in a house turned classroom situated by the right bank of the Kemena river going out to sea.  During break time we would chase crabs on the clean sandy beach and threw stones at fishes in the river.  Studying was a breeze because we had the beach frontage.

Today the Kemena river that flows by the original  town of Bintulu  is used for river regatta and power boat racing.

Once upon a tree

Bintulu in the late 50's -60's - with the airfield at left, town in centre and the Kemena River at right.

The historical Mango Tree, 2007

 Prior to Sarawak forming the federal structure called Malaysia in 1963, Bintulu was in the backwaters of the nation's development.  Its fortunes turned better beginning late 1970's with the development of oil and gas complexes at Tanjung Kidurong, heralding the first economic boom for the sleepy town and fishing village.  I have tracked the history of a Mango tree (Magnifera indica, see inset) as part of my interest in studying the impact of urban change and planning of this historical town which was the venue of the first Council Negeri meeting during the Brooke era in 1867.  To the best of my knowledge, it was planted just prior to the independence of Sarawak within Malaysia.  The tree is of historical significance in the sense that it has survived the onslaught of urbanisation starting the first boom till now which is in the fourth boom period.

Pic taken on 8th November, 2010

Pic taken on 14 July 2012

 This tree is as old as Malaysia that is 50 years on the 16th September 2013.  It is still standing today and I am anxiously counting the days when the local authority and planning body (Bintulu Development Authority) will allow some developers or contractors to cut it down.  So far, during the last 5 years since I started to blog about this tree, it has survived the blades of development.

Further browsing:
1) http://mybintuluhistory.blogspot.com/2007/07/stand-alone-mango-tree.html
2) http://mybintuluclicks.blogspot.com/2009/06/mango-tree.html

The BDC Padang of Bintulu

Aerial photo of Bintulu town, pre-first boom period (1950's - 1978)
The Bintulu District Council Padang or Padang BDC in Malay is the rectangular open space (partly seen) at the bottom most center part of the picture above.  It is surrounded by two Police barracks (seen at the left of the picture) and some government quarters around the padang edge.  A simple pebbled road connects it to the town as seen at the right of the picture.

In the very early days of Bintulu town especially the period before the first boom which started in 1979, there was only one public football field serving the town population of about 5000 people.  This field can be seen in the top picture.  It was maintained by the Bintulu District Council and as such was fondly named as BDC football field of "Padang BDC" in Malay. " Padang" means field or large open space.  It was here that as a young secondary school student I used to play competitive football.

MOOD (seen kneeling at the centre) as captain of the Bintulu Government Seconday School (BGSS) football team C in striped black and red jersey.........photo taken in 1965.

Footballers playing at the BDC Padang in early 1970's ; Note: the Police Barrack is partly seen in the background.

When the first boom catapulted the tiny and sleepy town into a developing and dynamic region, there arose many other public football fields built by the new development authority entrusted to spearhead the town into an industrial showpiece.  I am glad to have played on this humble field in the early 1960's.

First Facts of Bintulu - Bintulu's First Public Park

The above extract is self-explanatory.  It is interesting to note that as early as 1960, Bintulu imported plants from the Botanic Gardens, Singapore for its landscaping projects especially for its first Public Park which was opened in 1961 in time for the 1961 Bintulu Centenary Celebrations .  The exact site of the Park today is the Bangunan BDA building lot. Notice the space from the fence of the park to the row of private houses on the upper right hand corner. This space today is taken up by the Jalan Somerville or the Somerville Road.

(Reference: Bintulu Centenary Celebrations 1961- Souvenier Programme Book,pg. 50.)

Bintulu as Launching Pad for SCORE

Date of launching: 11-2-08 , by Datuk Seri Abdullah Badawi, Malaysia's 5th Prime Minister.

What is SCORE? It is an acronym for Sarawak Corridor of Renewable Energy. Unlike our bedroom corridor, a regional corridor means that the government is serious about making Bintulu as a highway to reach develop nation status by 2020, through one of its major economic generators i.e. renewable energy resources from Bakun hydro electric dam.
Bintulu's Bakun and a couple of scattered mini-hydro dams throughout SCORE territory, will power a maximum of 24,000 megawatts of electricity for the next 10 - 15 years of consumption internally in Sarawak and Peninsular Malaysia( exported by way of sub-marine cables) to industrialists as well as individual home owners.

Though the centre of SCORE is Mukah (by designing it into a smart city, where SCORE's policies and master planning will be incubated and pushed for implementation) , at the point of writing, there is nothing substantial in Mukah that can be relied upon to claim a measure of industrial progress that can be showcased at launching time. Thus Bintulu became a natural choice, because even now Bintulu is already a successful industrial showpiece in Sarawak. For Bintulu 2020 is now .
It was therefore a wise move to make Bintulu as the launching pad and Mukah can initially rely on Bintulu's success to pump on its renewal energy ambitions.

Well, all 's well that ends well.

The launching was received by a strong 15,000 pre-Parliamentary election crowd, by the mouth of Bintulu's main river, the Kemena River, where once the local Bintulu Melanaus went out to sea to defeat the last of the Illanun pirates roaming the South China Seas and most feared by the western colonists back then.