Monoscapes: The High Dam

A mist shrouded scene in northern Singapore at 7.11 am on 16 April 2013, taken by the water’s edge. The body of water is Upper Seletar Reservoir created by the construction of a dam (seen running across the photograph) across the Seletar Valley.

The origins of the reservoir can be traced to an initial attempt to build one in the 1920s which was abandoned when it became possible to pipe over water from the south of Johor with the completion of the Causeway. What came out of that was its use as a temporary source of water. In 1940, the reservoir was expanded and a permanent reservoir.

The huge and very picturesque body of water we see today, is the result of an expansion which took place in the late 1960s during which its capacity was expanded some 35 times. This required that the the dam across the Seletar Valley be enlarged.  The dam, referred to in its early years as the Seletar High Dam, is seen running across the photograph. The expansion of the reservoir also meant that Mandai Road had to be re-routed to skirt around the expanded reservoir.

More information on the dam and the reservoir can be found on a previous post:  A face that I still see.

A memory that is going to the dogs

Long abandoned by its erstwhile companions, the building that served as the former Nee Soon Post Office had stood for many years alone and almost forgotten. The bustling villages that once occupied an area that was dominated by a huge rubber factory for which it was built to serve are long gone, leaving the post office and a few other buildings behind to serve as an only reminder of what had once been. At the building, the only evidence of its former use is found in the post office boxes (P.O. Boxes) at an extension to its right and a post box painted in the bright and unmistakeable colours of the Telecommunication Authority which once ran the post offices.

Evidence of when the Nee Soon Post
Office closed – a orange and white postbox with the old Singapore
Telecom logo.

PO Boxes at the disused Post Office.

It wasn’t too long ago when hoardings were erected around the building, after which the building’s roof came off. With the recent demolition of the former Jalan Kayu Post Office building, there was some concern that the building was about to suffer a similar fate. A sign posted on the hoardings did however serve to provide reassurance that the building wasn’t being demolished, but rather, it was about to go to the dogs – literally! A veterinary clinic had taken over the premises for its use.

The building that housed the former
Nee Soon Post Office is being given a new lease of life.

The renovation and refurbishment of the former post office is now almost complete. The freshly painted building now stands with a new extension added to its left. The two reminders of the building’s previous use, the post box and the P.O. Boxes can still be seen – the P.O. Boxes have been relocated to the new extension as the extension to the right at which they were located has been torn down. While the P.O. Boxes do bear the finish that they were left with, the post box will look very new with a fresh coat of paint – something I wish that wasn’t done as the worn and faded look it was left in did give the appearance of a forgotten memory that had been frozen in time.

The disused Post Office building before the recent renovation.

While it would have been nice to see what certainly is a building which stands as one of the only reminders of a world that once was, it is good to see that some use has been found that will allow the building to be maintained – is always difficult in a Singapore that is quick to abandon its past and where conservation has more often than not to pay for itself, to find use in a way that is ideal. That in it going to the dogs does help to keep the building standing, may perhaps be not such a bad thing after all.

The post office when it was in operation.

Painting over a memory that was frozen in time.

Colours on a Sunday evening

The colours of the fading of day to night seen at a spot that I consider to be one of the more scenic places in Singapore and a place that I often find an escape in.

A landmark soon to vanish

Long abandoned by an old world that it had once been a part of, the Shell service station at the end of Mandai Road had for many years now looked out of place in the emptiness of its surroundings. It would have once held a strategic position, being placed right at the end of one of the main routes that took vehicular traffic from the east over the top of the catchment reserve to Woodlands Road which connected with the West of the island, as well as to the North where the Causeway brought traffic across to Malaysia.

The end is here for a service station which has been a landmark at the end of Mandai Road at its junction with Woodlands Road for as long as I know.

The station has for me, also long been a marker. It marked not just the point where the then narrow and rural Mandai Road joined the long and equally narrow Woodlands Road, but also when the zoo came to Mandai, as the point where we would see signs showing the way to the zoo. I had on many occasions passed by the station – on the long journeys to and from the Causeway of my childhood and also later when it was along the route of bus service number 171 which I would take from camp while doing my National Service to Sembawang Road where I could connect with a 169 that took me to my home in Ang Mo Kio. The station had then and for long, worn the look of one of the old world it was a part of. Even with the more recent makeovers, it did, when it was still operating, seem set in that old world – the washroom was an ‘outhouse’ – in every sense of the word.

The outhouse see from behind a fence.

It has been a while since I’ve driven by an area that one doesn’t really need to drive through anymore with the new expressways that has taken traffic from both Woodlands and Mandai Roads. I did earlier today and saw what for long I had suspected would happen – the station, already abandoned, was being hoarded up for demolition. Having already driven past it, I decided to turn back to bid an old acquaintance farewell. As I took a final look at what had for so long been a familiar face, it is with sadness that I realise that the last marker of a world that has been all but forgotten will soon itself be erased.

The hoardings coming up around the landmark.

A soon to vanish sight.

Another soon to vanish sight.

Maybe the last remnant of an old world – a shed that seems to be beyond the area enclosed by the hoardings that have come up.

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Update:

Good news! It seems that the station will be with us for some time to come … thanks to a reader, Mr Francis Ang, an update on what is happening at the station and also a few photographs (one of which I have posted below) have been provided which show that the station is apparently being upgraded. While it will perhaps lose some of that old world appeal it has had – it will still be right there where it seems to always have been!

The station as seen on 18 June 2012 (photo courtesy of Mr Francis Ang).

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A face that I still see

One of my favourite roads to take a journey on in Singapore is a stretch of Mandai Road that has got to be one of the more gorgeous drives in Singapore. It is a stretch that takes you past an area that is reminiscent of an older world at its junction with Sembawang road, around a bend where the road starts to rise northwards to an area where a short stretch of it runs along a body of water that in reflecting the colours of the setting sun takes on the appearance of a magical world. It is a drive I have enjoyed for four decades now – my first encounters with the stretch dating back to the end of the 1960s when the road was diverted around what had been a newly expanded body of water – what then was Seletar Reservoir (now Upper Seletar Reservoir). Those first encounters had been ones that would have involved a visit to the area around the large dam that contributed to the reservoir’s expansion – then a manicured area that offered some wonderful views of the reservoir not just from the top of the 20 metre high dam, but also the panorama one got of it from the top of a newly constructed lookout tower which still stands today.

The lookout tower at what is today Upper Seletar Reservoir Park.

The area which later was developed into a park and the expanded reservoir, was opened by HRH Princess Alexandra in August 1969. The work to expand of the capacity reservoir which traces it origins back to the 1920s, resulted in an increase in its capacity from a previous expansion in 1940 by some 35 times, giving the northern fringe of Singapore’s Central Catchment Reserve a large and very picturesque body of water. This was made possible by the erection of a larger dam across the Seletar valley which required a part of Mandai Road to be diverted. The reservoir started its life as a temporary source of water supply which was developed out of an abandoned effort in the 1920s to build a third impounding reservoir on the island. Work on that was halted when it became apparent that it was feasible to draw on the abundant sources of water across the Straits in Southern Johor with pipelines to feed much-needed resource integrated into the construction of the Causeway. It was in 1940 that the reservoir was made a permanent one having its capacity expanded to feed the island’s growing population.

The expansion was made possible by constructing a larger dam across the Seletar valley.

The expansion of the reservoir in 1969 increased the capacity of Seletar Reservoir by some 35 times.

The work which commenced in 1967 to expand the reservoir, also allowed its position on the northern fringe the Central Catchment Reserve to be exploited to provide a recreational area around it with access to large parts of it possible by road. Besides the park with its now iconic tower that was constructed, plans were also drawn up to use an area to the north-west of the reservoir for a zoological gardens what is today the highly acclaimed Singapore Zoo.

Upper Seletar Reservoir seen here along Mandai Road is one of the more scenic areas of Singapore takes on a magical glow during the sunset.

The setting of the sun over Upper Seletar Reservoir.

It is for the climbs up the lookout tower that I would look forward most to on my early visits to the area, my first visit being in October 1969 on the evidence of photographs that I have taken of my sister and me. It wasn’t however only the tower that occupied me during my visits to the park – the slope of the dam was a constant source of delight with the grasshoppers that seemed to thrive in the grass that lined the slope. The slope – or rather the road that ran down from the top of the dam where the tower is along the slop of the dam was also where I once, in the foolishness of youth, responded to a dare to go down the road on my roller-skates. Finding myself gaining momentum after setting off, it was probably fortunate that I decided not to go through with the dare and managed to pull out of it by turning into a turn-off not far from the top of the slope. Sliding across the rough surface as I lost my balance in turning off at speed, I was bloodied and bruised with abrasions that ran down the entire length of my right leg and a little embarrassed, but quite thankful that I had decided not to go through with the dare.

Adventures of a five-year-old around the lookout tower at Seletar Reservoir (now Upper Seletar Reservoir) Park not long after it first opened in 1969.

The road down from the top of the dam. I made an attempt to roller-skate down the road (which then did not have the gate we now see across it). I managed to turn at a turn-off to the car park (seen just beyond the gate).

The park today is one that I still frequent, not so much for the tower which does still somehow fascinate me, but for the escape it offers from the concrete world that I find myself now surrounded by. And, in those escapes that I take, it is comforting to find that in a Singapore where the relentless winds of change have rendered many places of my childhood for which I had a fondness for unrecognisable, the area beneath the changes it has seen in the four decades that have passed, is a face from that world that I still am able to see.

Post Offices of old

I just loved the old two storey post office buildings that were found all over Singapore when I was growing up. With a compound where one could park the car, it made it easy to “run in” to the post office for whatever stamps you might need. These were unlike the post offices of today, nestled in an obscure corner of a crowded town centre or on the hard to access upper floor of a shopping complex. I suppose there are those SAM self service machines which does make it convenient to buy a self-adhesive stamp label and post a letter, but nothing actually beats buying a stamp which would come out of a book and wetting it on a damp sponge placed in a little container of water at the counter, or even licking it, before getting it onto the envelope.

Many of the old post office buildings have since disappeared. Of the few that have been left standing – what comes to mind are the ones at Killiney Road and Alexandra Roads are still used as post offices. There is also the former Nee Soon Post Office building, now disused, which still stands along Mandai Road, close to the junction with Sembawang / Upper Thomson Roads.

The old Nee Soon Post Office along Mandai Road.

The disused Post Office building now stands as a reminder of the old Nee Soon Village.

Some of the post office buildings were built with an upper floor to serve a purpose: while the ground floor served as the post office proper, the upper floor given to serve as the Postmaster and his family’s quarters. A childhood friend whose father had been the Postmaster at the Thomson Road Post Office once related a story of how visitors to the post office were sometimes greeted by the strange sight of bean sprouts strewn across the car park. To get quickly through the tedious chore of plucking the roots off the huge bag of bean sprouts, which his mother often had him and his brother do, they would discard a portion of the bean sprouts out of the kitchen window into the car park!

The former Nee Soon Post Office building that still stands provides us with some reminders of a time when it served Nee Soon village, dominated by the rubber factory with a zinc sheet exterior painted in a rusty red, which was once owned by Lim Nee Soon: an orange and white post box of another era, old PO Boxes built into a wall … I am not sure what the future holds for the building, but I do hope it would always be there, to serve as a reminder of the old Post Offices that I so loved.

Evidence of when the Nee Soon Post Office sold its last stamp - an orange and white postbox with the old Telecommunications Authority of Singapore (TAS) logo. The orange and white TAS post boxes were introduced in 1982 and were used until the reconstitution of the TAS in 1992 which saw the TAS split into three entities: TAS, a statutory board serving as a regulatory body, and Singapore Telecom and Singapore Post.

Another view of the former Nee Soon Post Office.

PO Boxes at the disused Post Office.

Looking down Mandai Road to the Sembawang / Upper Thomson Road junction.