Thursday 27 August 2009

CHAPTER 3 Arrival in Borneo

CHAPTER 3
Arrival in Borneo

Our Borneo Airways Twin Pioneer, had been flying for nearly an hour since leaving Jesselton. John Galpine leaned across and pointed downwards. "That is where you are to be living for the next few years Leslie," he announced. "If we had parachutes we could save ourselves the long trip back up-river from Sandakan." Colin Black stiffed. He had been immersed in a book since we took off. He glanced downwards. "Nothing but bloody jungle for miles" he snorted. He leaned back and mopped his brow. The small plane was noisy, stifling hot, and there was an overpowering stench of aviation fuel. "This pioneer­ing will be the death of me," he grumbled.
"Twin-Pioneering is not too comfortable either," I ventured, but he had gone back to his book.
Colin and I had spent our first few days in North Borneo, in the capital, Jesselton (which was later to be given the much more attractive name of Kota Kinabalu.). We were met off the Singapore flight by the General Manager of the Chartered Bank, John Kennedy, and his wife Eunice. We were to be their house-guests during our stay in Jesselton. Having been instrumental in helping Unilever to acquire the Haes-Wright concession, the Chartered Bank managers in both Jesselton and Sandakan took a keen interest in the progress of the development right from the outset. John and Eunice were to play an important part in my life over the next few years. They made it clear that I was to consider their home as my Jesselton base. On my rare visits to the capital, Eunice would arrange dinner parties with various colonial officials and this provided the contacts, which eased my passage through the various government departments. Walter Brown, the Manager of the Sandakan Branch and his wife Betty, both Aberdonians like myself, performed the same function on my visits to Sandakan. They were to become life-long friends of mine.
On the way from the airport to Jesselton town, John stopped the car at a white concrete kiosk, which looked like a rather small public toilet. Inside this, was the Governor's Book. Visitors to the Colony were expected to sign themselves in, on arrival. This helped the Governor to keep in touch with the day-to-day comings and goings in his parish. Colin and I duly obliged. We met the Governor in his office the following day, prior to going back with him to his residence for lunch. Sir William Goode had only taken up his appointment a few months earlier. I was to get to know him quite well in the next three years. He was an unusual figure for a pro-consul. He was tall, bronzed, and athletic looking. He had a broken nose which gave him the appearance of a prize-fighter.
The Governor showed us to a set of comfortable leather armchairs in the corner of his bright, air-conditioned office. There was a pair of crossed oars and a couple of caps with tassels hanging on the wall behind him, which indicated that Sir William's athletic prowess extended to the river as well as the boxing ring. His Government was, he said, delighted that Unilever had decided to make a substan­tial investment in agriculture in the colony. Currently, the colony's largest export earner by far, was timber, extracted from the sparsely populated jungles on the east coast. Eighty percent of the production went to Japan. The colony was the world's largest exporter of round hardwood logs. It was not, he said, something he was particularly happy about. To be so dependent on one single extractive industry was not a healthy situation. The stand of marketable timber in the colony's jungles was not infinite, and he had worries about what would happen when the supply of timber dried up.
Turning to agriculture, the Governor told us that it was not doing very well. The country's four main agricultural exports in order of importance were rubber, copra, tobacco and manila hemp, (or abaca as it was called locally.) The rubber industry was in decline. There had been a mini-boom during the Korean war, but since then the world price had dropped steadily, and the west coast rubber estates were unable to pay high enough wages to attract tappers. Coconut growing was confined to smallholdings, and although copra showed in the records as a major agricultural export, most of this consisted of the re-export of copra coming in as part of the barter trade with the Philippines. The tobacco industry, which had been at one time the colony's main export earner had virtually disappeared. The last remaining tobacco estate at Darvel Bay had just given the Government notice that they would be closing in the next year or two. This, the Governor said, was a severe blow to the colony. Abaca was not doing well either. The price was dropping because of competition from synthetics and the growers were actively looking for an alternative crop. Although there were some signs that cocoa might do well in the Quoin Hill area, the soils suitable for this crop were fairly limited.
It was vital, Sir William told us, that the colony came up with some new crop, which could thrive in the wet river-valleys of the east coast. Sir William was particularly pleased that Unilever's investment was to be in the form of an oil palm plantation. Although some oil palms had been planted in the last couple of years by the CDC (Commonwealth Development Corporation), on one of their abaca plantations, the colony as yet, did not produce any palm oil. Sir William had seen the expansion of the oil palm plantations in Malaya and he thought the crop would be a very useful diversification for North Borneo.
He also expressed great pleasure over the fact that we had decided on the Labuk Valley for our project. The Labuk was, he said, an area, about which the Government was deeply embarrassed. Since the demise of the tobacco industry in the last century, the area had been completely neglected. It was the most depressed and backward area in the Colony in many respects. There was some timber extrac­tion going on in the upper Labuk, he told us. Unfortunately, when the logging companies moved on, they left nothing behind in the way of development. The Governor promised Colin Black that he would take a keen personal interest in the project and that his Government would assist us in any way it could.
Following our meeting, we had lunch at the Governor's residence. He had invited only two other guests, with whom he had an appointment later in the after­noon. They were the two leading local representatives on the colony's Executive Council. One was Datu Mustapha, a District Officer from Kudat, and the other was Donald Stephens, the Editor of the North Borneo News and Sabah Times, the only English newspaper in the Colony. As it turned out, the Governor had made an inspired choice of luncheon companions for us. I was to see a lot more of both men in the course of the next few years. They both became my friends, and they both maintained a keen interest in the progress of our plantation.
When Sabah became in due course an independent state within Malaysia, Datu Mustapha became the leader of the Islamic Party, and Donald became the leader of the Kadazan Party. Both, after some complicated political reshuffles, became in turn, the Chief Minister and the Head of State. Datu Mustapha was a trim, immaculately dressed figure wearing a black songkok. He was reserved and very self-contained. He had an air of authority about him. He was, I was told, a Sulok by extraction and he was by birth a native chief in the Kudat area. His English was not, in those days very fluent, and when he discovered that I spoke Malay he suggested that he would prefer us to use that language. Over the years that I knew him, his English improved rapidly but he always insisted in speaking to me in bahasa. He suggested that when our project got underway he would like to visit it, and this he did on two or three occasions. He was of course a fount of knowledge about the east coast of North Borneo, its peoples and customs, and we had an absorbing chat over lunch.
Donald Stephens was a rather portly figure. He was twice the size of Datu Mustapha. He was a warm, outgoing character. His father had been a European planter and his mother was a Kadazan. He was currently involved in trying to establish the United National Kadazan Organisation, but he was finding it hard going, he said, to drum up much interest amongst the Kadazans. As the editor of the local paper he was extremely interested in oil palms as a potential export crop. He questioned me closely about the future of palm oil, and he invited me to come round to his newspaper office on my next visit to Jesselton, for an interview.
Colin and I were both immensely encouraged by the Jesselton visit. It was clear that the Colonial Government, at least at the top level, would give us all the help and backing we would need to get the development off the ground. For the visit to Sandakan and to the concession we were joined by John Galpine. My old boss was still the manager of Pamol Kluang, in Johore. John had carried out the initial study of the Borneo concession and he had been asked by Plantations Group to help organise our initial trip greedily soaking in every detail of the country, which was to become my home for the next decade or so. Shortly after leaving behind the small square emerald green patchwork of rice-fields, which spread out over the plains surrounding Jesselton, and then flying over the western foothills, planted almost to their summits with smallholders rubber and vegetables, the naked granite ramparts of Mount Kinabalu loomed out of the clouds above us. At thirteen and a half thousand feet high, Kinabalu is the highest mountain in South-East Asia. Its long, jagged, escarpment looks like the eroded base of a mountain which at one time might have been bigger than Mount Everest, although the geologists tell us that on the contrary it is actually a hard granite core, which pushed up through the softer surrounding rocks only some nine million years ago. The mountain was a breathtaking sight. "Clouds with rocks in 'em are bloody bad news in my book," was our leader's gloomy assessment of this scene of awe-inspiring grandeur.
Leaving Mount Kinabalu behind us, we had flown over its jungle-clad foothills, split up by narrow torrents dashing downhill towards the east. Soon the rivers became slower and deeper, winding their way eastwards to the Sulu Sea through mile after mile of virgin jungle. "That's the south-west corner of your estate." I followed John's pointing finger. Below us, the Labuk River was joined by its smaller tributary, the Tungud. Together these two rivers formed the southern and western boundaries of our concession. I could see a small clearing the size of a football field on the river bank. Apart from this, every inch of the concession was covered with dense secondary bush and jungle. Only the lower, more regular stand and the absence of the rounded crowns of the giants of the virgin forest, gave any indication that the area had been felled and cleared to create the tobacco estate which had been abandoned seventy years ago. Away from the rivers, to the north, there was nothing to be seen from horizon to horizon but jungle: not a village, not a house, not a road. Nothing! "You are not going to be bothered by too many neigh­bours," said Colin Black: "At least not human neighbours," he added thoughtfully.
However, as we flew downstream from the junction of the Labuk and Tungud, one or two huts appeared along the riverside, and in a moment or two we were over the village of Klagan. It was situated on an island in the Labuk river. It consisted of about twenty attap-roofed huts and shop-houses. A couple of large cargo kumpits and dozens of small canoes tied up against the jetties which were formed of floating logs. Klagan, John said, was the third biggest village in the Sandakan Residency.
"Looks as if a puff of wind could blow the whole dammed place away," said Colin. Little did we know how prophetic he was being.
Downstream from Klagan, the main body of the river split in two in a sort of delta. One branch, the Klagan river, formed the eastern boundary of our property. It swung away down to the Sulu Sea. Our plane continued to follow the main Labuk river, which meandered towards its estuary in Labuk Bay. Out over the wide bay John pointed out the village of Beluran, which was the headquarters of the European District Officer. Then we were flying over the small fishing village of Kulapis. Minutes later we crossed the neck of land, which separated Labuk Bay from Sandakan Bay. I had a glimpse of a few scattered rubber smallholdings and vegetable farms, before we circled over Sandakan town.
Sandakan was beautifully sited at the northern tip of the bay, protected from the north-east monsoon by the towering red cliffs of Berhala Island. Like all coastal towns in Borneo, its suburbs spilled out into the sea on stilts. Further out, in the blue water of the bay, four or five Japanese ships were anchored. They looked like toy-boats floating in a child's bath. Their derricks swung to and fro unceasingly, lifting logs from the huge log-rafts floating around them and stacking them on their decks.
A couple of tugs butted their way out through the slight chop, each towing more long rafts from the timber ponds which fringed the shore. Timber was the life-blood of the east coast. In 1960, Sandakan was a boom town, exporting more tropical hard-wood timber than any other port in the world, and with almost all of it going to Japan.
The harbour was very close to the centre of the town. It held a motley collection of local craft. It was like a living page from a Conrad novel. We could see long outrigger Sulok sailing dapangs from Tawi Tawi; elaborately carved lipa lipa of the Bajaus; rusty copra kumpits from the Philippines; white Government launches; graceful tall-masted pinisis from Kalimantan, and sea-going Bugis perahus from Celebes. At the other end of the harbour a few Chinese junks clustered round the fish market.
Behind the colour and excitement of the water-front, the town of Sandakan was being developed in a rather severe grid system around the town padang. It had obviously been laid out by a Public Works Engineer. It had all the flair and imagination of the Kennington Oval gasometer. The local population never had a high opinion of the artistic merits of PWD engineers anywhere in our colonial empire. (Tellingly, the awkward-looking kapok tree with its geometrical shape, its branches sticking stiffly out from the rigid trunk, and the big, untidy-looking leaves arranged at right angles along its branches, was known by the Borneo population as the 'PWD Tree.')
The town of Sandakan was saved from boredom however by the rich diversity of its buildings. As we swung over it, losing height, we could see a mixture of houses with red tiled roofs, wooden belian shingle roofs, even the odd attap roof. In 1960 Sandakan was still in a state of transition. The entire town hadbeen flattened during the Japanese occupation. Within weeks of the return of the British administration, the Chinese merchants were jostling with each other to erect temporary wooden buildings in the prime positions. After a few years of pros‑ perity due to the timber boom, these early buildings mysteriously started to becomeprone to fire damage. One by one, and quite selectively, they burned down. As the insurance policies were settled they were replaced by smart new concrete buildings. With a thump, the Twin Pioneer's wheels touched the runway and the fascinating flight was over. It was all new and exciting. Somehow I felt I wascoming home and I had a sudden feeling as I walked to the wooden hut, which served as the Sandakan Airport that I had been here before. "I just hope that the Sabah Hotel has air-conditioned bedrooms," said our boss. "I don't know about you two, but I'm going to have a bath and a long cold pint of beer".

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