The 66 ha Rifle Range Nature Park, which opened on Saturday, adds to Singapore’s growing list of wonderful publicly accessible parks that, placed on fringes of Singapore’s nature reserves, act as buffers to protect the forest reserves. These nature parks offer a chance for all of us in Singapore to do some forest bathing and take in some of Singapore’s natural beauty without adding to the pressures on our fragile forests.
The former Sin Seng Quarry turned freshwater wetland.
Singapore’s latest nature park takes its name from Rifle Range Road, which served as the access road to Bukit Timah Rifle Range. The range was built in 1924 by the Public Works Department, primarily to serve the Singapore’s volunteer forces. By 1930, the road was named after the rifle range, which later became the home of the Singapore Gun Club.
The former quarry and the viewing deck 31 metres above the freshwater wetland.
Rifle Range Nature Park, which is home to a wealth of biodiversity with more than 400 species of flora and 300 species of fauna (including the critically endangered Sunda Pangolin and Leopard Cat), features 7 km of boardwalks and hiking trails — the longest amongst all the nature parks. Some of its highlights is the former Sin Seng Quarry turned freshwater wetland, and, best of all, a wonderful viewing deck (Colugo Deck) that provides a breathtaking view of the wetland and beyond from 31 metres above!
Rifle Range Nature Park offers 7km of boardwalks and hiking trails
The visitor pavilion, which takes inspiration from the baffles of a rifle range.
The roof deck of the Visitor Pavilion.
The rain garden.
On the Gliders Boardwalk.
A Malay Viscount.
A shelter — made of mass engineered timber.
Cleverly designed lightning conductors line the boardwalks, featuring the fauna of the park.
A Malayan Colugo, seen in the vicinity in October 2018. The species, which is known for its distinctive skin membrane — which inspired the design of the Colugo Deck, has a near-threatened conservation status.
One of the things that I quite dearly miss are the seemingly long road journeys of my childhood to the far flung corners of Singapore. The journeys, always an adventure, provided an opportunity to the many different sides that Singapore then had; places that had each a unique charm and character.
A stream running through the now forested area, close to what would have been the 12th Milestone.
One especially long journey was the one to would take me to the “wild west”. The journey to the west, along a slow and dusty Jurong Road that meandered from the 8th milestone of Bukit Timah past wooded areas, settlements, graveyards, rubber plantations, and a rural landscape that is hard to imagine as having ever existed in the brave new world that we now live in.
There is a reminder of that journey, an old stretch of the road that, even stripped of rural human existence and its paraphernalia, bears some resemblance to the old road. Found just north of the Pan Island Expressway (PIE) between Bukit Batok Road and Jurong West Avenue 2, it has been relegated to a service road and has been all but forgotten.
12 Milestone Jurong Road today.
The stretch, now shaded by its overgrown trees, would have corresponded to the 11th to 12th milestones of Jurong Road – an area that went by the name “Hong Kah” before the name was appropriated by a public housing precinct across the PIE in Jurong West. Hong Kah Village itself stood right smack where the 12th milestone was and it wasn’t one that would have easily been missed in the old days, just as the old Chinese burial site nearby, Bulim Cemetery, on the road just past the village that gave me the chills on night drives past the area.
12 Milestone in 1986 (source: National Archives Online)
The odd sounding “Hong Kah” quite interestingly translates to “bestowing a religion” in the Hokkien or Teochew dialects. It was a term that apparently, in colloquial usage, was also used to refer to Christians (Chinese converts to Christianity I suppose). “Hong Kah Choon” was thus the “Christian Village”, so named due to its association with the Anglican St. Andrew’s Mission, which had carried out missionary work in the area since the 1870s (see page 45-46 of NHB’s Jurong Heritage Trail booklet). The mission also built a nearby church, St. John’s Church Jurong, located at 11th milestone at the top of 105 steps on a hillock. Put up in 1884, the church operated until 1992. That was when it was acquired together with the rest of the area for redevelopment.
The track leading to SJJ at 11 MS Jurong.
Cleared and left untouched, except for its use as military training grounds until very recently, nature has since reclaimed much of the area – which stretches up north to the Kranji Expressway. Today, the site hosts a lush secondary forest, complete with fresh water streams and a thriving birdlife. Redevelopment, will however soon clear much of what is now there, to be replaced by a forest of concrete that will be called Tengah – Singapore’s 24th “new town”.
One of the forest’s winged residents – a (male) common flameback woodpecker.
Dubbed, rather ironically, as the “Forest Town“, Tengah will feature a fair bit of greenery. Much of which, however, will quite saldy be manufactured and put in once the existing forest has been cleared and a fair bit of concrete has been introduced – which is the Singapore way.
Another resident – a St. Andrew’s Cross spider.
Also manufactured will be a “real” forest that will take the form of a 100 metre wide and 5 kilometre long “forest corridor”. Running by the Kranji Expressway, it will serve to connect the Western Water Catchment Area and the Central Catchment Nature Reserve. And again, in the Singapore way, the corridor will be one that is “planted with rainforest tree species to transform it into a rich forest habitat”.
The first phase of the transformation of the former Celestial Resort into the Ubin Living Lab (ULL), an initiative announced by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong as part of The Ubin Project on November 2014, has been completed with the launch of the ULL (Phase 1) on Saturday by Senior Minister of State for National Development Desmond Lee.
A Singapore conversation taking place by the mangrove tree lined Sungei Puaka?
Set in the midst of the mangroves of Sungei Puaka – one of the largest patches of mangroves left in Singapore, the ULL, intended as an integrated facility for field studies, education and research, and community outreach, will also see a mangrove arboretum set up. The arboretum will see eight critically-endangered local mangrove tree species re-introduced as part of NParks’ ongoing reforestation and habitat enhancement efforts on Ubin.
SMS Desmond Lee at the launch – with ITE College East staff and students working on setting up nesting boxes around the island for the Blue-throated Bee-eater.
The first phase sees the restoration of two buildings on the site to accommodate a field study laboratory, seminar rooms for up to 100 people and basic accommodation facilities. An outdoor campsite is also being set up to take up to 100. The first users of the ULL will be students from the Republic Polytechnic and ITE College East who are looking at setting up roosting boxes in Ubin for insect eating bat species and nesting boxes for the Blue-throated Bee-eater as part of a biodiversity enhancement and species recovery programme.
The setting for the ULL – the former Celestial Resort.
The Ubin Project is an engagement initiative launched by the Singapore Government aimed at enhancing the natural environment of the island, protecting its heritage and also its rustic charm, involving a Friends of Ubin Network (FUN) that has been set up. More information on the project’s initiatives can be found at the Nparks website. Members of the public can look forward to a series of activities organised by NParks and the National Heritage Board – who have recently concluded an anthropology study on the island, aimed at bring the rich natural and cultural heritage to a wider audience. Information on the activities NParks already has planned can be found at a NParks news release Celebrating Ubin.
Senior Minister of State for National Development Desmond Lee, launching Phase 1 of the ULL.
SMS Lee putting the finishing touches on a nesting box.
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.
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 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.
Very early on a Saturday morning, I found myself boarding a boat headed for Singapore’s offshore landfill at Pulau Semakau. Established in the sea space that once separated two of Singapore’s once inhabited southern islands, Pulau Sakeng (or Seking as it was also known as) and (the original) Pulau Semakau, and contained by a 7 kilometre bund, the landfill has seen the creation of an enlarged single island which has kept the name of the larger of the two islands, Pulau Semakau.
The enlarged Pulau Semakau has been created from a landfill between two existing islands the original Pulau Semakau (to the west) and the smaller Pulau Sakeng (to the east) that is contained by a 7 km perimeter bund.
(Memories of Pulau Seking (Sakeng) posted on youtube by a former resident)
The original Southern Islands of Singapore – Pulau Seking (Sakeng) can be seen south of Pulau Bukom. The larger island to the west of Pulau Seking was the original Pulau Semakau to which it is now attached .
What had motivated me to catch a taxi at 4.15 in the morning just to get on the boat wasn’t so much a fascination for what Singapore does with its waste, but a intertidal walk on, what may surprise some, an expansive tidal flat on what is left of a natural shoreline that has long been known to be rich in marine biodiversity – that despite the extensive disturbance of the natural environment caused by what has gone on around the island. The large tidal flat is one of the few that’s also left in a Singapore that has been robbed of much of its natural shorelines by the extensive land reclamation work that has been carried out both on its mainland and offshore and offers an experience that is well worth waking up at 3.45 am for.
Part of the natural shoreline of the original Pulau Semakau which has an expansive tidal flat still exists in the north-western corner of the enlarged island, home to an offshore landfill.
The journey to Pulau Semakau began with a boat ride at 5.15 am.
A very comfortable hour’s boat ride from Marina South Pier was all it took to get to the island. The ride in the darkness before daybreak offered none of the excitement that had accompanied my first journeys to the southern islands, but the ride was certainly by a very similar sense of anticipation. The point of landing on Pulau Semakau was the area which once had been Pulau Sakeng, the last to be vacated of the two islands in the early 1990s and cleared of its stilted wooden dwellings that extended out from its shoreline, bears no resemblance at all to an island that for its inhabitants would have seemed like a little piece of paradise compared to the all too crowded mainland they now find themselves in.
… which arrived at about 6.20 am at what once was Pulau Sakeng (now part of the enlarged Pulau Semakau).
What was meant to have been a half an hour’s walk to the north-west corner of the enlarged island and where what is left of the tidal flats which had once surrounded the original Pulau Semakau is still left relatively untouched, turned into one that took a little more than an hour with the distraction caused by the colours of the fast lightening sky behind us. From the wide roadway built on top of the northern bund we had walked along, we trudged through a small mosquito infested forested area to get to the tidal flats, which by the time we got there, lay exposed by the tide which had already ebbed, with a few bakau mangrove trees to greet us and perhaps remind us of the coastal vegetation which would have once encircled the island, and is thought to give the island its name.
The walk into the darkness towards the western end of Pulau Semakau.
The colours of the sunrise served to lengthen what would have been a half an hour’s walk along the bund.
The view towards Pulau Jong.
Tidal flats have for me always served as wonderful places for discovery and walks I am now able to take on such flats always bring to mind the wonderful excursions of the sea grass fields off Changi Beach of my childhood, during a time when the sandy seabed there was littered with an abundance of knobbly sea stars, sea cucumbers, and crabs darting across and burrowing into the sand. Those were times when armed with a butterfly net, we would fill a small plastic pail with harvest of edible marine snails (gong-gong), shrimps and flower crabs which we could put on a grill.
A forested area separates the natural shoreline at the western end from the paved road constructed on the bund.
The sun rises over the flat.
Evidence of a concrete jetty that was once used by the island’s inhabitants seen in the mangroves.
A lone mangrove on the tidal flat.
Mangrove regeneration … besides the naturally occurring regeneration of mangroves, mangroves have been replanted along the areas of the coastline disturbed by the work that has gone on.
A group of photographers walking across the tidal flat.
Another view of the tidal flat looking towards Pulau Bukom.
A field of sea grass.
The tide starting to flow in – a view towards the edge of the tidal flat.
A sense of the space on the flat.
Right at the beginning of the walk on the tidal flat, our guide, Ron, made a very interesting discovery – a red nudibranch (sea-slug) that he had not previously spotted on the flats in the many other occasions he has visited it. There was a lot more that the flat was to reveal over the very interesting two-hour walk including three varieties of sea cucumber, two other very pretty looking nudibranchs, moon snails, anemones, flat worms, a giant clam, knobbly sea stars and even a very shy octopus that dove for cover as soon as it was spotted – best seen through the photographs that follow …
A red nudibranch not seen on the flats before.
A very pretty nudibranch – the Gymnodoris rubropapulosa.
A third nudibranch – Jorunna funebris (Funeral Nudibranch).
A flat worm.
And one in its natural environment.
Close-up of a maze coral.
Knobbly sea stars.
A tube anemone.
Another anemone.
Sea cucumber.
Zoanthids.
Moon snail.
The intertidal walk that I participated in is one of several ways in which Pulau Semakau can be visited, and was one that was run by licensed tour guide Robert Heigermoser. Other ways in which the island can be visited are on activities organised by interest groups such as the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research, the Nature Society Singapore, The Astronomical Society of Singapore (TASOS), and the Sports Fishing Association (Singapore) that needs the blessing of the National Environment Agency (NEA). Guided tours and walks would often include a landfill tour. The tour which is interesting in that it introduces various aspects of the landfill including its history, as well as a bus tour around the landfill and the receiving station where waste incinerated at one of the three incinerators on the mainland is transferred from barges to tipper trucks which carry the waste to the landfill site. More information on Pulau Semakau, activities on Pulau Semakau and the landfill at the NEA website can be found at this link (Landfill Brochure) and also on this link link (Semakau Landfill).
One of the cells of the landfill that has been filled up.
The southernmost point of Singapore that the public has access to is at the end of a bund that contains a lagoon that will be used for phase 2 of the landfill when all the cells in phase 1 have been used.
The view from the bund southwest towards Pulau Pawai and Pulau Senang which is a live-firing area.
Part of the visit also included a drive through of the receiving station where incinerated waste from the mainland’s rubbish incinerators are transferred from barges onto tipper trucks.
The boat back and with the receiving station in the background.
Together with 9 other bloggers and thanks to Tigerair Philippines and the Philippine Department of Tourism, I found myself on a dream trip to Boracay in July 2013. Read about the fantastic experience I had at Boracay Island Escapade or on my blog.
Courtesy of the Hong Kong Tourism Board (HKTB), I had the opportunity to have a 4 day adventure in Hong Kong with 9 other bloggers. To read our collective Hong Kong Travel Blog entries, please click on the icon below:
The first phase sees the restoration of two buildings on the site to accommodate a field study laboratory, seminar rooms for up to 100 people and basic accommodation facilities. An outdoor campsite is also being set up to take up to 100. The first users of the ULL will be students from the Republic Polytechnic and ITE College East who are looking at setting up roosting boxes in Ubin for insect eating bat species and nesting boxes for the Blue-throated Bee-eater as part of a biodiversity enhancement and species recovery programme.
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 Long and Winding Road 