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.

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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).

A simple pleasure

Possibly one of the best places in Singapore to enjoy the rising of the sun is along the northern shoreline just east of Sembawang Park. It is in the area where of the last natural sandy beaches left on the island can be found. Wild and untamed, it is full of character which is no longer found in the manicured seaside parks we now have too many of. The beach, off the former Kampong Wak Hassan, is one I often find myself at, partaking in one of the simple joys that nature brings – the painting of the sky by the colours of the rising sun – made even more of a wonder to behold by the beauty it reveals of a beach that is like none other in Singapore – at least for now. The signs are there that it will not be long before a now all too familiar world descends upon it. Until then, it will be where I will be able to cling on to a little reminder of a past we have otherwise discarded.

6.47 am

6.52 am

6.54 am

7.00 am the sun appears at the horizon

7.10 am

7.13 am

The joy of solitude in a world forgotten

It is in a world by the sea that lies forgotten that I often find myself in silent solitude to celebrate the joy of the morning. Spared from the obsessive desire we in Singapore have to manicure and introduce clutter to our public places, it is a world which connects me with the wonderful memories of childhood holidays by the sea in a gentler Singapore that we long have left behind. I do hope the day when this world is made to catch up with the new is far away, but it probably will be a case that it will come sooner rather than later with developments in the area gaining pace to bring us that promise land some find little promise in. But before that happens, it will serve as an escape from a world it increasing is hard to find an escape from and a world we I can at least feel at home in.

A song which soon will be forgotten

For me, one of the most difficult things about being at home in Singapore is how little there is of what ties me to it that I can hold on to. The Singapore of today is one which bears little or no resemblance to the Singapore I grew up in, and one which I am very much attached to. I often find myself overcome with that sense of longing and sadness that accompanies a realisation that I can never return to that Singapore I fell in love growing up in.

I find myself wandering through many of the altered spaces, in search of the little reminders that remain of those times forgotten, often leaving only with regret. Many of these spaces, now devoid of a way of life it once supported, are empty except for the clutter of ornaments inherited from the modern world.

There are but a few spaces which have been spared this clutter. It is in the echoes of these spaces left without their souls, that I sometimes hear the singing of a song the lyrics of which might once have familiar.

A familiar tune is still heard along the northern shores. Spared thus far from the interventions the modern world is too fond of, it is where the memory of naturally formed beaches, now a rare find, has been preserved. It is where perhaps a memory of a way of life we have forgotten can also be found in the casting of nets and rowing of sampan–like hulls.

Alas, the familiar tune may soon be one we are to forget. The advance of a world in which it is hard to find sanity, has reached its doorstep. We see swanky beach front units that reek of the smell of money sprout in an area in which the smells would have been that of seawater soaked wood, of fishing nets drying in the sun, and of the catch from the sea. For how much longer will I be able to hear the familiar tune in my ears, I do not now know, but it is a tune I am determined to try to hear for as long as I am able to.

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About the beach and the former coastal villages :

The beach in the photographs is one of the last natural stretches of sandy beaches left in Singapore. It stretches from the seafront of Sembawang Park eastwards past the seawall at the former Kampong Wak Hassan and past the seafront area of the former Kampong Petempatan Melayu or Kampong Tengah, where it is broken by the mouth of a diverted and canalised former tributary of Sungei Simpang, Sungei Simpang Kiri. It would have run further east towards Tanjong Irau at the mouth of Sungei Simpang – that area, currently used as a military training ground and is inaccessible, is a reserve site for public housing and will be the future Simpang New Town – the coastline of which will be altered by land reclamation based on the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) Master Plan 2008.

Kampong Petempatan Melayu or Kampong Tengah was a Malay Settlement which was established in the 1960s on some 16.5 ha. of land acquired by the Government from the Bukit Sembawang Group. It was a group of three coastal villages just east of the Naval Base which also included Kampong Tanjong Irau to its east and Kampong Wak Hassan to its west. A mosque, touted as the “last kampong mosque in Singapore”, the Masjid Petempatan Melayu, was built in Kampong Tengah which still stands today, despite the disappearance of the village.

Coming a full circle, the land fronting the beach is currently being developed by the Bukit Sembawang Group as a luxury development, Watercove Ville which will see some 80 strata houses built, and in all probability, the beach and beachfront will soon have to be made over.

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Monoscapes: Kampong Wak Hassan beach

What is possibly one of the last natural accessible stretches of sand along the coastline of the island of Singapore lies along the northern shoreline off Sembawang Park, stretching to the area off the former coastal villages of Kampong Wak Hassan and Kampong Tengah. Except for the attempt to “renew” the area around Sembawang Park which will result in it losing much of its previous charm, the shoreline in the area is one that is relatively untouched. Left in an almost natural state, the beach is one rich in character and in which the memories of a world that has ceased to exist can still be found. With property developments gaining pace in the area, it probably will not be long before the memories provided by the old but falling seawall and the natural beach, are paved over in the same way much of our previously beautiful coastline has.  Until then, it is one of the few places close to a world I would otherwise find hard to remember, in which I can find a rare escape from the concretised world that Singapore has too quickly become.

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About the former Kampong Wak Hassan:

The former village (kampong or kampung as it is spelt today), was one of several coastal villages that were found just to the east of Sembawang Road and the former British Naval Base, running along the coastline to Tanjong Irau at the mouth of Sungei Simpang. While the coastline played host to the nomadic inhabitants of the Straits of Johor, the Orang Laut, specifically the Orang Seletar, the kampong, stands as the oldest of the settlements in the stretch.

The village came to the location after work to build the huge naval base which ran along the northern coast from what is today Sembawang Road west to to the Causewayin the late 1920s displaced the the original Kampong Wak Hassan which grew from a coconut grove founded by Wak Hassan bin Ali at the original mouth of Sungei Sembawang (the area just west of what is today Sembawang Shipyard) in the 1914 (being granted rights by the Straits Settlements’ Commissioner of Lands to the use of the land stretching from the mouth of the river to Westhill Estate – which became Chong Pang Village).

While the base did provide residents of the village with employment opportunities, most of the villagers who may have originally been employed in rubber plantations which once occupied the lands around the coast and in the coconut groves, were involved in fishing.

The village besides being the oldest in the area, was also the longest lasting. While most of the inhabitants of the other villages were resettled at the end of the 1980s, the last inhabitants of Kampong Wak Hassan only moved out as recently as in 1998.

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Previous posts related to Kampong Wak Hassan and the greater Sembawang area:

• 13 Feb 2012: A final frontier
• 25 Dec 2012 : The largest dock east of the Suez
• 24 Aug 2012 : A memory of a forgotten time
• 16 Jul 2012 : Last post standing
• 29 Mar 2011 : Sembawang beyond the slumber

A place to greet the new day:

• 30 Mar 2013 : A sunrise to remember
• 9 Feb 2013 : Sunrise over a world the sun may soon set on
• 30 Jan 2013 : Another Wak Hassan sunrise
• 30 Jan 2013 : Mornings far from the madding crowds
• 20 Dec 2012 : Two December’s Sunrises
• 1 Nov 2012 : The sun sets as dawn breaks
• 17 Aug 2012 : Sailing off into the sunrise
• 9 Aug 2012 : The sun rises on independent Singapore’s 47th birthday
• 2 Aug 2012 : Varying moods of a most beautiful place
• 24 Jul 2012 : A new morning, a new joy
• 25 Jun 2012 : The joy of the morning
• 22 Jun 2012 : A face in the cloud
• 7 Jun 2012 : The sun rises in the north
• 31 May 2012 : The song of a forgotten shore

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A sunrise to remember

A sunrise to remember in a part of Singapore we may soon have to forget, the un-manicured and rather wild looking shores of northern Singapore, off the former Kampong Wak Hassan.

First light, 6.35 am 30 March 2013.

Colours before the sunrise, 6.45 am 30 March 2013.

Colours, 6.55 am 30 March 2013.

Colours, 6.58 am 30 March 2013.

Colours, 7.07am 30 March 2013.

The rising sun, 7.11am 30 March 2013.

The rising sun, 7.12 am, 30 March 2013.

The rising sun, 7.14 am, 30 March 2013.

The sun rises on independent Singapore’s 47th birthday

Photographs of the spectacular break of day I was very fortunate to have witnessed on the morning of Singapore’s 47th birthday. The first photograph was taken at 6.41 am and the last at 7.15 am and were taken at a natural beach along Singapore’s northern coastline that I hope will be left as it is …

A calm that may never again be found

I often find myself by the sea in a place that seems forgotten. It is here that, despite it having lost much of the charm it once exuded, one does still find a semblance of the old and gentler world we have chosen to discard. It is also where it often is a joy to take the start of the new day in, free from the distraction of the urban world that now does not seem far away. Sitting by the old crumbling sea wall, the reflection of the changing hues of daybreak off the gentle undulations of the sea brings not just that moment of magic that precedes the rising of the sun, but also a sense of calm that is hard to find in a world now dominated by the cold of steel and concrete. Every moment of magic is one to celebrate as if it were the last – the winds that bring with it the change that until now this world escaped seem not far away. It is a matter of time before it does arrive bringing a world with it in which the calm that I now seek may be a calm that will never again be found.

The celebration of the new day in a world that for now seems forgotten.

The magical calm that the surface of the sea takes on at the start of the new day.

The song of a forgotten shore

I have, of late, stolen moments alone, moments in which I am able to wander at the break of day along a forgotten shore. In the calm of the morning, it is the song that is sung in the greeting that the sea gives the shore that I hear, a tune that takes me to a time I might otherwise have forgotten. As I listen, the lightening of the sky reveals the shore which except for the signs of human interventions of a not so recent past, is one that is untamed. The shore is one that wears textures painted by the meeting of water with a litter of sand, wood and stone. It exudes a beauty that only few can see, a beauty that finds no place in the manicured world we now embrace. I sometimes spot a figure dancing through the wash. In the face of the figure it is my face that I often see, my face not of today, but of a yesterday of three decades past. As I take the walk the figure takes, I find myself walking back to once familiar shores, shores that although distant, are close by through a familiarity of sight. I am grateful to still be able today to take these walks yesterday, taking each as if it were a last. The next may be a walk into tomorrow. And with tomorrow, the forgotten shore and the distant shores that I am reminded of, will be ones that will certainly be forgotten.

The forgotten shore.