A road-trip this time with the Angel on the wings of Chas's sporty limited edition Toyota convertible. For the mandatory annual testing Chas takes the motor to his mechanic to correct the illegal modifications and lowering, before reversing to his requirements once more for the year ahead.
Almost heavenly riding the bitumen on good-grade rubber perhaps from local plantations. As expected, the Angel was an excellent driver, temptations for short bursts along the straights and declines aside. Fears concerning all the newspaper reports of sleep-deprived and casual lorry drivers over-running pedestrians and motorcyclists failed to deter the heavenly being.
No need explain, even in the morning it was far too hot to pull back the hood and let the wind ruffle the imaginary locks. Gentle aircon made the green stands and the soft blues and cotton whites beyond the glass into something approaching magazine and film-clip panorama: blessed picnicking travellers carrying a hamper of cheese and cucumber sandwiches with chilled white in the trunk.
Kranji is the nor'west corner of the island. En route we stopped at Peirce Reservoir to gather the silence of the gentle pastoral folds. Two large basins of water and luscious green on all sides from which a rare couple of Singaporean strays emerged, seated themselves by the edge of the water and proceeded to lick their private parts.
One needed to emerge from the conveyance in order to properly seize the place. All the rivers in Singapore had been stopped for water catchment, the Angel informed. We passed one sluicegate on the coast that gave an example of the engineering; at another point on our return Gabby advised of our pass over the water piping from Johor in Malaysia, which still represented a significant proportion of Singapore's water.
Gabriel had promised farms and more controversially dairies; cud-chewing cows with moveable limbs and digestive systems. Plaster and 3D repros would not suffice.
There were something like three dozen farms on the island of Singapore, weeks earlier the Divine had revealed at one of our eatery tables.
The green nurseries and sheltered vegetable pavilions could be seen from the roadway. They were too numerous to tally. Orchids and flowers, aloe vera rows and leafy greens under covers. We would sup on the latter at the Bollywood Farm with a traditional summer salad from the temperate zones, where the proof of the pudding was fully confirmed.
Dark faces under wide straw sombreros sat at their weeding and harvesting. Mexico, Southern Africa and Dubai perhaps scrambled together in the visuals. As in much other farming in the contemporary world, loneliness was writ large at Kranji. A great distance from the old communal gatherings in a shared endeavour, singing and wisecracking as the harvest was brought in.
Still, these were farms alright, true enough. Not all the food and sustenance of life was sourced elsewhere in Singapore. Singapore was more than condos, malls and HDB towers; one could easily get that wrong.
Fittingly the moos came as the climax. Without warning the Angel had seized the reins of the chariot and characteristically, without words, simply turned his head toward the little dust cloud outside the passenger window, from which the guide allowed the discovery beyond to arrive at its own pace.
The gaps and missing slats in the fencing gave a glimpse of large, bulky forms within an oddly rude structure. The ramshackle nature of the area out in this quarter was taking some getting used to. Over-grown grass, leaning shelters, dilapidated hoardings. There was said to be a dirt road in the vicinity, the sole example of the kind on the island that had pole-vaulted so rapidly and famously into the First World in three short decades.
The pollies never ventured into this corner for media releases. Along the route the sky-line of Johor, Malaysia came through the trees, the outer edge here a kind of prelude to the world over yonder in supposedly less favoured lands.
There was movement at this little station beyond. A closer investigation was required in order to be sure.
An Indian mucking-out indicated how we might enter. Gabriel needed no more encouragement. A spin of wheels, another, smaller dust-cloud, through the gates and parked.
From twenty paces the Indian comprehended the hailing in his own language. Tamil. Something like 35% of the Indians in Singapore were Tamil, a mix of Hindu and Muslim.
These were cows here over which the lad had charge, there was no denying. All the plaster products one had seen previously throughout the island, the decorative cut-outs and the rest that stood as educational aids and religious symbols, fell away before the breathing, live animal. In this case upon our entry the one tethered in front as if on demand dutifully evacuating her bowels. A white face—a pair of white faces before her—had alarmed the poor beast.
There stood a half dozen others within the pen on one side, a couple of bulls and some separated calves. On the other side in a smaller pen a small herd of goats that caught the light through the slats of their stall. Their young coats, their glistening horns and lustrous eyes made a beatific manger scene, produced as if on demand by the former Methodist Divine.
After three years within the confines of the city here the animal movements, the little turns and twitches, one or two short prancing gambols, left a brain more than a little buffeted.
One had expected fans, if not air-conditioning. There seemed nothing of the sort. So far as one could tell the grounds beyond the stable offered nothing of pasture. Very unlikely these beats would ever leave their enclosure. The conclusions rapidly mounted.
Even back in the 50s the Agriculture Department down in Queensland had insisted cattle remain on concrete flooring only during milking, Gabriel reminded himself, recalling his Granddad's dairy in the Isa. On land-precious Singapore and in the heat, there was no possibility.
Earlier in the morning we had passed the cluster of tourist features conveniently grouped together: the famed Night Safari, the Animal Safari and the Singapore Zoo. By reports the latter was well constructed, visitors walking beneath gorillas swinging between trees directly overhead, for example. Carefully hidden fencing, some of it electrified, produced the sense of wild, open terrain. As far as such things went, this was among the best of its kind, an award-winner of the region, it may have been. From one water channel we caught the quaint old river-boat from River Safari, familiar from the newspapers and the sides of the double-decker buses. Daddy decked in outdoor shirt and binoculars pointing out some kind of sight to spellbound Junior. A signboard passed on the roadway had lured with bundle ticketing—all three entertainments for $103.
The War Memorial at Kranji was the second object of the day's outing. One had read about it and seen numerous pictures in the newspapers. Visiting heads of State and dignitaries dutifully paid their respects at Kranji. A year or two ago after having been presented with an orchid named in her honour—cultivated at one of these modest farms in all likelihood—Julia G. had laid a wreath. The Windsor prince and his young wife, the future king and queen, had visited.
Above the white stone markers rose the grassy knoll. This was lawn beneath our feet, carefully maintained; not the leafy weed seeded between the HDB towers. A groundsman at one of the cricket pavilions at an exclusive school might have been charged with the responsibility here. The Indians resting in the shade we saw worked under this man's close supervision.
Greetings from the boys, glinting smiles visible from afar. When whites peer closely at dark faces in Singapore, almost invariably some delight resulted. Hail lads! All hail!
The little hillock was a natural formation; the fact had been mentioned in one of the records of construction. Virtually all the hills and rises in Singapore had long been levelled for the housing sector, the dirt used for land reclamation. At the top of the rise here stood an odd aeronautical-inspired kind of Stonehenge, crowned by an almost Soviet star and.... sabre-blade perhaps it was.
There had been prizes awarded for the design. Immaculate garden beds without a stray leaf. Despite appearances in the shade of the tree, the horticultural detail was kept on a tight leash here.
There was a surprising lack of shade here in the grounds in famously shady Lion City; no covered walk-ways or escalators visible. There was precious little room for trees certainly, the entire ground being covered by the lines of head-stones in simple white form, bearing names, dates, regimental insignia and brief pledges and prayers.
By the looks of it, the battle for Singapore had resulted in mountains of dead. On the slabs erected on the summit there were thousands more names inscribed.
A closer inspection revealed this was more War Memorial than actual burial ground. There were bones of the dead alright, originally interned by the servicemen who had been housed here in a Japanese prisoner of war camp; later the larger Changi prison and its associated graves were transported when that site was transformed for the airport. Otherwise a great number of the mentions were of war dead from much further afield—the Thai-Burma railway and New Guinea, Malaysia and Indonesia. The dead of the Korean War, the Malaya Emergency, the Indonesian Kronfrontasi and Vietnam too found a place at Kranji. Singapore made room for them all. That was the explanation.
Naturally two old Australians gravitated toward the dead of our homeland. Something over 1,100 lay buried in this ground, with a similar number memorialised from other fields of action in the region.
That afternoon the arrangement of the Memorial was difficult to fathom. British contingents were impossible to distinguish from Australian. There were Gurkas, South African units and Indian sepoys. The Islamic names in the stone on the summit could only be Malays from the Peninsular; unless they were Egyptians or Levantines perhaps. In fact hadn't the rebellious Malays signed some kind of non-aggression pact with the Japanese prior to the invasion? Someone at the eatery tables had surprised with that information a few months before.
The scale and extent of all of it was very strange. One stone on the Eastern flank marked a child born in June 1967, who had died the following month. How had this little mite been awarded a place among the fallen? Like a good deal else here, it seemed odd.
Eventually the Angel came upon an information tablet advising of the unspecific and dispersed burial. A large proportion of the markers were not headstones proper, in the sense of marking remains that lay beneath. Some research would be needed in the days ahead.
The roll call of the Australians on the Southern flank of the knoll echoed the era of Bradman, the older generation of teachers at Primary School and the books of learning from that time. Sutcliff. Wentworth. Jacobs. Rintoul. Sabberton. Walter. MacArthur...
Were these living names still in our towns and cities? The Angel insisted the affirmative, as well a Queenslander might, especially one who had been up in the tropical region almost a half century.
The regiments echoed that same former world, that vast Empire upon which the sun was beginning to set at the relevant period. The Canadian Cavalry. 1st Coy Maltese Labour Corps. 49th Bengalis. Worcestshire Rifles. East African Artillery. The Prince of Wales's Own Royal Hussars...
Certainly there would be nothing of this same order anywhere else in the region. Hardly. Only Singapore. The campaign here had lasted little more than a week, the Japanese famously riding their bicycles down the jungles of the peninsular, rather than launching the expected landing around in the south where the British guns were trained.
One of the notes on the grounds mentioned 69 Chinese Servicemen, members of the Commonwealth Forces, killed by the Japanese in February 1942.
Near the end of our survey a school-group from a Normal stream descended from a bus.
There were no pleated skirts, shirts and ties in this gathering. In Singapore testing at upper Primary decided a student's fate in Secondary schooling, and often well beyond. In the early '80's there had been a government eugenics program encouraging the academically gifted to pair and produce offspring. This was a wondrous political and social sphere no two ways about it. The tiny little red dot was not easy to comprehend.
Normal tousled-haired kids more or less in their regulation white tees, clambering over the rise following teacher's lead. Under the tropical sun many went along the avenues of markers bare-headed, scanning the foreign names that would challenge the best and brightest in the choice Bukit Timah schools, and even the universities.
What to make of this monument to which they had been brought?
Teacher attempted to create some kind of order for her charges. The boys and girls listened with their eyes on the low stones and the record they bore.... JAC – OBS… RIN – TO – UL… SA – BBER – TON...
What was this all about? Why the enormous disproportion on this land of theirs?
The Japanese bad guys had no place here of course. Here were only good guys on this side, strange bed-fellows though they were to be sure.
A great, great sacrifice made for them, for this youth, so that they might flourish, no doubt teacher reminding. The great helmsman Mr. Lee had made it so. Good Mr. Lee, the bravest of them all, surviving to tell the tale of triumph, of his fallen men who had made the ultimate sacrifice. The great general, like Mao Tse Tung his brother fighting together...
Heaven help the poor urchins trying to make head or tail of the thing. It was difficult enough for two old wise heads stumbling over the grounds from one line to another.
Kranji, Singapore
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