The grass IS greener on the other side

The prolonged dry spell in Singapore saw an extremely parched February become the driest ever month on record (since 1869). Only 0.2 mm of rain was recorded at the Changi climate station, and the absence of rain has resulted in many previously green spaces turn very brown, in contrast to some of the well taken care of spaces such as the many golf courses, which are one of the groups of heavy consumers of the precious resource.

The contrast can’t be any more striking than when viewed at the transition between the manicured greens of a golf course with a public space such as is seen in the photograph. The photograph was taken on 9 March 2014 from the fringe of one of the two Singapore Island Country Club’s (SICC) courses at its Bukit location where there is an adjoining public space by the water’s edge at MacRitchie Reservoir. The Bukit location is where one of the courses that the SICC will return to the government for use as a public course, when its lease expires in 2021.

Light after dark: The Pier @ Peirce

Capturing the cloud painted twilight, 7.44 pm 21 December 2013, Lower Peirce Reservoir.

The green, green grass, disappearing from home

In a Singapore inundated with the clutter that urbanisation brings, open spaces – wild, and green, however transient, are always ones to be celebrated. Open spaces such as this one on which a former cemetery, Bidadari once stood, are fast being lost to the tide of steel, glass and concrete from which they had served as a respite from  - sanctuaries where a much needed sense of space otherwise missing in the clutter and crowds, can be found.

The cemetery was one of Singapore’s largest and with burials taking place over six and the half decades from 1907 to 1972, contained as many as 147,000 graves of members across the communities. Converted into a temporary park after the completion of exhumation in 2006, the grounds, even in its days in which the resting places of the departed decorated the landscape, has been a place to find peace in.

With its days now numbered – a recent announcement by the HDB on plans for its redevelopment as a housing estate has the first developments taking place by 2015, there is not much time before the joy it now provides will be lost to the urban world it has for so long resisted.

The plans put forward by the HDB do show some sensitivity to what the place might once have been or represented, with the cemetery and the greenery it provided not completely forgotten.

Besides the preservation of some of the cemetery’s heritage, one promise that the development of the 93 ha. site holds is that of a 10 ha. green space which will incorporate a man-made lake – said to be inspired by the famous lake which belong to the Alkaff Lake Gardens we now only see photographs of.

While that does create a very pleasant environment to live and play in, it will not provide what the space now provides, that escape I find myself seeking more and more of from the overly cluttered and crowded world our many of our urban spaces have become.

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Other disappearing or already vanished open and green places:

• Remnants of the former British Naval Base
• Bukit Brown Cemetery
• Spaces off Sembawang Road / Canberra Link
• The corner of Woodlands Avenue 10 and Gambas Avenue

Some newly found, existing or reclaimed spaces:

• The Rail (Green) Corridor
• Lorong Halus
• Lower Peirce Reservoir
• Upper Seletar Reservoir

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A look at a dump

Travelling down the Tampines Road of old back in the 1970s and 1980s, it was hard not to miss the convoys of trucks on their eastward journeys down the road.  The trucks, laden with much of what Singapore discarded, were headed to what then became Singapore’s last onshore dumping ground, occupying some 234 hectares of land on the right bank of Sungei Serangoon, which before the conversion to a rubbish dump site in 1970, was a large swamp (mangrove swamps lined much of Singapore’s original coastline, particularly along the northern coast) rich in bird life.

A very natural looking man made stream close to the area where a village, Kampong Beremban, once was.

Taking a look around the former Lorong Halus dumping grounds these days, it is hard to imagine that it as a dump site for close to three decades (it was closed on 31 March 1999 and incinerated refuse has since been dumped offshore at Pulau Semakau). Part of the area today has been remade and is now a man-made wildlife sanctuary, the Lorong Halus Wetland. Despite the obvious signs of human intervention, the area (including that beyond the sanctuary) does have an aesthetic value from a natural environment (albeit man made) perspective, and offers that escape that can be hard to find in an island overgrown with too much concrete.

Another part of the former dump site.

The wetland, is also linked to a bridge across what has since the mouth of the river was dammed, become Singapore’s 17th reservoir, the Serangoon Reservoir. The bridge provides access to what was the left bank of Sungei Serangoon, where the new public housing estate of Punggol has been developed, via the Punggol Promenade Riverside Walk.

Sungei Serangoon today.

For those familiar with the area, the area of Sungei Serangoon upstream from Lorong Halus at the end of Upper Serangoon Road was where old Kangkar Village was. Kangkar Village was a fishing port and once a base for fish traders and also Singapore’s fishing fleet, which numbered some ninety vessels in 1984 when it was closed to be moved to Punggol. The location of Kangkar today would be close to where Buangkok East Drive is.

Punggol and Sengkang public housing estates looming in the background on the left bank of Sungei Serangoon – Sengkang was the area where Kangkar Village was.

Interestingly, Lorong Halus was also where Singapore’s last night soil collection centre was located. The practice of collecting night soil (human waste) using buckets in both urban and rural areas, was carried out from the 1890s up to early 1987 when the last rural outhouses were used. Besides the rufuse that was generated by Singapore, also buried at Lorong Halus is the remains of a false killer whale which was stranded in shallow waters off Tuas in early 1994. The wetland was opened in 2011 and more information can be found at this link.

The bridge across the reservoir.

The view on the bridge.

A resident of the wetland.

A sunrise over Singapore’s green lung

The rising sun seen at 6.51 am on 3 October 2013 emerging over the cover of the trees along the eastern edge of the Central Catchment Reserve in Singapore. Together with adjoining Bukit Timah Nature reserve and with an area in excess of 3000 hectares – just over 4% of the total land area of Singapore, the reserves maintain a huge area of forest in central Singapore. The reserve is also an important water catchment area in Singapore and is where four of Singapore’s main reservoirs are located.

After the storm

6.43 am 9 October 2013, the colours of sunrise showing through after an early morning storm.

A sunrise from Ghost Island

A view of the rising of the sun at 7.25 am on 24 September 2013, looking across Keppel Harbour from Keppel Island. Keppel Island before 1983, was named Pulau Hantu or “Ghost Island” and was renamed when Keppel Shipyard started development of shipyard facilities on the island which was obtained in exchange for two graving docks, the Victoria and Albert Docks, which were transferred to the Port of Singapore Authority for development of the Tanjong Pagar Wharves. The island where the Marina @ Keppel Bay is now located, is now linked to the mainland by a cable-stayed bridge, the Keppel Bay Bridge (on the left of the photograph). The bridge, opened in early 2008, is said to be the longest in Singapore with a span of 250 metres. The bridge and marina are part of a luxury waterfront development taking place in what was formerly land occupied by Keppel Shipyard. More information on the shipyard, the historic graving docks it operated in the area and the developments taking place can be found in two previous entries: A sunrise on another strange horizon and The King that lost its glory.

More information on Keppel Bay Bridge can also be found at Keppel Corporation’s website (click on this link).

Light after dark (Lower Peirce on the rocks)

Twilight, 7.33 pm 21 September 2013.

Sunrise over a crossroad

6.51am 9 September 2013. Rays of the rising sun stream over a part of Singapore which will very soon change. The area at the crossroads of Sembawang Road and Canberra Link will see new Housing and Development Board (HDB) flats coming up, their completion estimated around late 2016, early 2017.

Sunset over the strait

The setting sun over Johor Bahru, seen across the Tebrau Strait or Straits of Johor from Woodlands at 7.04 pm on 25 Aug 2013.

The glow of the new day

An unusual sight at sunrise at 7.03 am on 18 August 2013 with the clouds parting to leave a clear band of sky at the horizon coloured by the rising sun.

Light after dark (Lower Peirce Reservoir)

Capturing the beautiful light after darkness has fallen, this time at 7.43 pm on 7 August 2013 at Lower Peirce Reservoir …

Colours of independent Singapore’s 48th birthday

Colours of the new day breaking at 6.51 am on the occasion of independent Singapore’s 48th birthday. Happy National Day Singapore!

Light after Dark (The lookout point)

A view from the lookout point along one of the more scenic roads in Singapore, Mandai Road at 7.43 pm on 4 August 2013. The view is one in which the foreground is partially illuminated by the street lamps, with the rest of what’s in the picture, lit by ambient light, captured through a fairly long exposure. The lookout point, provides some picturesque views of Upper Seletar Reservoir, and is one of my favourite scenic spots in SIngapore, having first taken in the views at the end of the 1960s.

Dawn in the new world

6.38 am on 23 July 2013. The colours of the breaking day illuminate the icons of the new Singapore, which the Merlion probably best represents. The body of water, Marina Bay, now a reservoir of fresh water, had once been the sea where the inner harbour, the Inner Roads, once fed Singapore with its immigrants and with goods from east and west , the foundation on which Singapore’s early success was built upon.

Colours of the morning, 24 July 2013

The colours of the sunrise seen at 6.47 am from a wild and forgotten shore along which I find quiet moments on many a morning.

The Bench through the rain

A view of The Bench through the rain with the colours of the rising of the sun in the backdrop at 7.06 am on 9 July 2013. The Bench is very much a part of the scene along the top of an old seawall that used to belong to Kampong Wak Hassan at the end of Sembawang Road. That it is there, under the cool shade of a tree, is a mystery. Nobody does seem to know why it is there or who it had belonged to. It does serve to connect us with the kampong (now spelt kampung) or village which might otherwise be forgotten. The village was one of the last of the villages which one featured across much of rural Singapore to be cleared in 1998. More information on the village can be found on a previous post Monoscapes: Kampong Wak Hassan beach. The beach along the seawall is also one of the last natural sandy beaches left in Singapore and serves as a welcome escape for me from the overly urbanised landscape of modern Singapore (see: The song of a forgotten shore).

Light through the darkness

While a storm sweeping in at dawn does usually bring with it a muted celebration of the new day, the effort to catch the break of day is sometimes rewarded with a surprise as it was today when the storm clouds parted to reveal a spectacular view of the coloured light of sunrise filtering through the darkness …

The colours of sunrise seen through the gathering of storm clouds at 6.48 am on 9 July 2013.

Light after dark (Upper Seletar Reservoir)

Light after dark at 7.44 and 7.50 pm on 7 July 2013 taken at Upper Seletar Reservoir.

Light through the darkness

A sunrise seen through the darkness of a storm blowing in on to the northern coast of Singapore on 9 June 2013.

7.02 am

7.09 am