Labour of love than spanned the decades

This bamboo grove could well be the oldest in a public park in the capital

THIS is probably one of the oldest bamboo grove in the Perdana Botanical Garden. There are two clumps actually, if viewed at an angle of 90 degrees to where this was painted. In fact, this is one of the features of this public park that has not changed over the last three decades.

In the 1970s, when I was still in my teens, I used to visit the Lake Gardens (as it was then known) during the school holidays.

This was because in those days, there were few such places that has several attractions within walking distance of each other. It was also one of those places accessible by public transport.

Those days, there was only a clump of bamboo trees on the circular man-made island. At the time, this lake was known as Sydney Lake.

According to G.M. Gullick (Kuala Lumpur, 1880-1895), the parkland was originally a valley of secondary forest irrigated by Sungai Bras-Bras.

Then, Selangor State Treasurer A.R. Venning had proposed to Swettenham that a botanical park be built in the roughly 173-acre land. 

Venning’s labour of love spanned 10 years and sparked public interest and received support.

Cantonese community leader Chow Ah Yeok was said to have contributed 100 white cempaka and orange trees to the project in 1888. A contractor named Gordon was engaged to dam the river and turn the lower part of the valley into a lake.

On May 13, 1889, Governor of the Straits Settlements Sir Cecil Clementi Smith declared open the Lake Gardens. Mrs Swettenham was given the honour to cut the ribbon and the lake was named Sydney Lake, after her maiden name.

However, the original man-made lake was short-lived. Two years after the opening, the bund that held the man-made lake collapsed and had to be reconstructed.

In 1975, the Lake Gardens was renamed Taman Tasik Perdana, (Perdana Lake Gardens) by then Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak. The lake became known as Tasik Perdana. Boat rowing facilities were also introduced after the re-launching ceremony on March 1, 1975, starting with colourful oar-powered skiffs, and later pedal-boats.

The fee back then was one ringgit for an hour’s spin around the lake. On popular days such as weekends and public holidays, long queues could be seen waiting for a ride.

The Perdana Lake Gardens was again renamed the Perdana Botanical Gardens on June 28, 2011 by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak.

Over the few years, many other botanical attractions have been added to enhance this tourist attraction. They included sections containing indigenous fruit trees, local herbs and even a garden dedicated to the ginger family.

Much care has been taken of the lake as well, as seen during my recent trip there. Several aerators are placed at the lower end of this lake, which holds a few common species of local fish, to increase its oxygen level. There’s also a boat mounted with a cleaning sieve in front that was used to clean up the flotsam of broken twigs and leaves.

According to the signages, a huge part of the park is also a WiFi zone.

On the island, under the bamboo grove, I spotted a family of local ducks preening in the sun. I was told by a park worker that they were released by the council.

However, I also spotted a couple of what I thought to be crows flying out of the bamboo grove until they swooped down to forage by a small drain about a 100 metres away.

Imagine my surprise when my camera’s zoom lenses revealed the identities of the birds which I later found out to be a species of ibis, possibly Hadeda ibis, which is not indigenous. I was even more surprised when I called the park office to find out about these birds. Apparently these birds were not local nor were they released by the park authority.

Tranquillity in Bagan Hailam

Hailam Choon is Hokkien for Hainanese Village. This one sits on stilts by the banks
of the North Port of Port Klang.

PORT Klang's Hailam Choon (or Hainanese Village in Hokkien) is a century-old riverine village at the North Port of Klang. Known locally as Bagan Hailam, this village comprising cluster of wooden houses built on stilts and linked by concrete walkways, sits on the banks of the Klang Riverover looking the estuary.
 

This is one of the temples in the village. The concrete
structure sits on a boardwalk of timber

  Built along the swampland that was once filled with mangrove trees, this village is believed to be set up by the Hainanese immigrants in the 1900s. It used to be accessible only by rowboats from the opposite bank, where the Royal Selangor Yacht club now is. However in the 1980s, with the development of the North Port, tarred roads were built in to the area to cater to the logistical needs of the many industries set up here.
 
  According to a villager in his 60s, who came to watch me capture this tranquil estuary at the back of one of the temples here, Bagan Hailam was a thriving fishing community from the 1960s to the 1980s.
 
  "There were many houses here those days," he lamented. "We have three temples and come each festival to mark the birthday of their resident sages, people would come by the boatloads to pay homage or watch Chinese opera." He pointed out that during its heyday, there were almost 2,000 inhabitants in the village. Bagan Hailam even had its own Chinese primary school, SJKC Wu Teck, set up about a centuryago. The school had since moved to Bukit Tinggi in 2011, leaving an empty shell of the asbestos-roofed timber building as a stark reminder of dwindling populace.
 
  I was told that most families who had made their fortunes during Bagan Hailam's better years had moved on. Some of them had either sold "ancestral homes" or rented these homes to mostly immigrants working in nearby industries. Very few of the descendants of the original families still fish for a living.
 
  "Even the children of those now staying here have moved elsewhere," the man said.
 
  There are several seafood restaurants operating at the back of the houses here, fighting for survival with the bigger eateries that sit along the esplanade. I was told that the prices in Bagan Hailam are quite reasonable.
 

That's the Selangor Yacht Club at right

  Along the lower reaches of Bagan Hailam are commercially operated fishing ponds that draw a good crowd of anglers, especially during the weekends. On the other side of Bagan Hailam, along the road fronting the channel, is a recreational esplanade area known as Tanjung Harapan or Cape of Hope. This stretch is very popular with weekenders, particularly recreational anglers who are just happy to wet their lines.
 
  The currents along this stretch can be very strong and unpredictable, an angler friend says. At certain times of the year, the king tide can bring the waves right up to the road, he warned. Perhaps this was why Tanjung Harapan was once known among boatmen as Tanjung Gila, to describe its unpredictable temperament.
 
 ALMOST RAZED
 
  BAGAN Hailam was thrown into the limelight on June 20, 1992, when a chemical tanker MV Chong Hong III, caught fire and exploded while discharging xylene at a chemical complex nearby. The incident, which claimed 13 lives, took place about 100m from Bagan Hailam and this had caused a mass evacuation of the villagers. The villagers were relocated temporarily by the authorities in case the fire spread to a fuel depot nearby. However, a number of villagers braved the fiery threat by staying back in the village to guard their homes from potential looters.

Guardian of the Flame

GUARDIAN OF THE FLAME
(300MM X 410MM)
Available

I was in Kuala Sepetang, Taiping, not too long ago and whenever I am there, I would pay a visit to the charcoal factory lying just outside the town that was once known as Port Weld. This is the picture of the guardian of the flame tending to the fire at the kiln during the second stage of charcoal baking.

The entire process of making charcoal takes about three weeks with several firing stages. This is in its final week when the door of the kiln will be sealed shut using bricks and the temperature gradually brought down. It takes an experience person to gauge the temperature. Too high and coal turns to ash. Too low and the coal will be smoky.

The job is back breaking, the surroundings smoky, hot and even hazardous. But for someone of limited education, this is the only option in a town where high-paying jobs are few and far in between. And for the sake of his family, the guardian of the flame has to keep the fire going.

Mood and Atmosphere in Watercolour

I may be biased but I think watercolour, as an artistic medium, can depict mood and atmosphere no other medium can. I did this piece after reading about the homes of the Orang Asli in Kelantan that have been ravaged by uncontrolled logging activities. It features an Orang Asli watching two others on a raft going downriver. It was done with a combination of browns and blues, in various tonal values.

Self-Portrait Should Be Approached Without Inhibitions

Just for the fun of it. This is like a jigsaw puzzle. Drawing from a photo is not tough but getting into a messy picture can be trying. Thankfully I managed to complete this self-portrait in wastercolour with the dots and dashes and washes, keeping as many elements in the picture. I'm quite happy with the foreshortening of the legs and the skin-colour. Self-portrait is a tough subject to approach, one that should be tackled with reckless abandonment, I think. If you are restricted by any inhibition, self-consciousness will end your artistic journey before you could lay the first colour.

TESTING COLOURS: Keeping Visual Information to Minimum

How do you paint water? How do you know that what you are painting is water? Using three primaries again, I did a quick sketch of a tethered dinghy on calm water. How do you know there is water? 

Well, the reflection is one dead giveaway. But the second clue is the boat itself - what do you think when you see a boat? Unless indicated otherwise, chances are that you mind will be looking for the boat's support - the water that it is usually sitting in. Whether it is a lake or a river, or even the sea. And when you find a reflection beneath the boat, your mind will confirm what you are seeing is a boat on water that you are seeing. 

So in sketching, the trick is to keep your pieces simple, with just enough information to let the viewer fill in the rest.

TESTING COLOURS: The Power of Primaries

Although it is well known that the three primaries of yellow, red and blue make up a host of other colours in the spectrum, few of us prefer to have premixed secondary colours because it is easier to get the colours right every time. I feel that if we are to learn to use only the three primaries, we can train our minds to pick out the right mix every time too.

This cluster of vegetables, a cauliflower, two tomatoes, a cucumber and two chillies were painted using only three colours - yellow, blue and red - which are the known primaries. When mixed in varied proportions, primaries give a stunning variety of colours under the rainbow.

The cauliflower was created using blue + yellow and a tinge of red; the tomatoes using red + yellow and a trace of blue; and the cucumber two shaded of green using blue + yellow and overlapped; while the red chillies were created using red + yellow with a bias towards yellow. The shine on the tomatoes and chillies were created by lifting off. The patterns/texture on the cauliflower were created by natural pigmentation - happy accidents, watercolourists call it.

WHY IT WORKS: In strict sense, you dont need a full set of colours in a 12 or 16-plate palette to do a good representation of your subjects. Understanding the power of primaries can give you that advantage of creating harmonious compositions as can be seen here. Every single colour placed shares a component colour of the other. How can that be not harmonious?

National Monument @ Kuala Lumpur

I was in a hurry to get away from the tourists that I forgot to sign this work!

I have always wanted to sketch the National Monument but had always been intimidated by the figures, the sheer size of them and the various poses that make up this bronze structure which marked the nation's struggle towards Independence. Finally today, armed with a simple Kokuyo watercolour set and a Rotring sketch pen, I decided to grab the bull by its horns. This above is the result.

The drawing took me
 less than 15 min

The National Monument is located within the Lake Gardens area, just behind the monolothic Cenotaph. It is surrounded by a moat and fenced up. I decided to only keep to the monument because of the challenging conditions - getting the proportions of the figures right and deal with foreshortening. Instead of trying to draw what I knew, I decided to allow my experience in countour drawing to take over. And this drawing technique came to my rescue.

Colouring was much easier, with two layers of paint to depict the different tones and a combination of earth colours and blues aided in showing the greenish-brown disposition of the oxidised bronze statues. The flag was simply painted with stripes of red across the white paper. It would have been great if the day had been windy as I could capture the flag full blown.

He was preparing to shoot
when my photographer snapped
his picture first. He left.

Not making it any easier were the hordes of tourists who were there. Some just looked over my shoulder without commenting; others complimented. There was one Chinese tourist who decided he wanted a close look over my shoulders when my photographer decided to take a snap of him, and when he realised this, he decided to keep his camera and walk away.

Capturing the icon of Alang Sedayu

This red bridge was built across the Alang Sedayu's Sungai Pisang to link the main road to the Jungle Lodge side of the forest reserve. The water level of the river is low even though it had been raining almost every evening. I arrived here this morning and managed to get down to one of the large boulders in the middle of the river to paint this scene. Usually it will be waist deep and there is no way to place my stuff.

Surprisingly this river is still clean. It's beginning is from the Sungai Pisang waterfalls, a couple of kilometres away, across the Karak Highway. This recreational forest north of Selangor, on the Gombak-Bentong main road, was opened in the 1990s and despite its proximity to the city, it is still not much frequented by locals. Only groups here are those doing their team building and school events.

Rail knowledge at Kluang railway station

Kluang Station, a view from Platform 2, showing the location marker
and a tamping machine on the tracks.

Sending my daughter to her friend's home in Kundang Ulu yesterday took me south to Johor and my wife and I visited Pagoh, Yong Peng, and finally ending up in Kluang. I had been to Kluang before many years ago but had never put up the night there. I remember, the only thing that attracted me to the town, was the famous railway canteen whose nasi lemak, coffee and toast were one of the best in the country.

This time we arrived on Thursday, and unfortunately for me, the canteen was closed. Since I could not do much there, with the station less crowded, I was able to sit and sketch from Platform 2 of this station. This is a major stop for the KTM trains heading to Singapore or the Northern regions.

Since the station building was crowded with cars parked haphazardly, I decided to paint the scenery across the tracks, of the location marker and the locomotive-like machine on its tracks. This is actually a Unimat-Compact universal tamping machine by Plasser-Theurer used to maintain railway tracks. It helps to raise the rails, compact the gravel beneath, and levels the rail off mechanically.

Finding coal in Kuala Sepetang

This was done in the kiln shed, which houses several other igloo-shaped kilns. This kiln has been
sealed at the end stage of charcoal baking. The pungent air within, although not captured on camera,
makes the eye teary. I had to quickly finish this under low-light conditions.

IN the days before cooking gas was available, charcoal and wood were the preferred fuels for cooking. There were two types of charcoal sold in sundry shops – soft charcoal, which is cheaper and usually made from any type of wood, and the hard charcoal, made from mangrove logs. The latter is denser and much more preferred as it produces fire that burns hotter and longer than the soft charcoals.

Located in Kuala Sepetang (or Port Weld as it was originally known) along the coast of Perak, some 17km from Taiping, the charcoal factory owned by Khay Hor Holdings is one of the few remaining ones in the Peninsula that produces the higher quality mangrove log charcoal.

I was fortunate enough to be allowed into the factory to sketch one of the igloo shaped kilns made of bricks. Unfortunately the charcoal was still being made and not ready to be removed, so I did not get to go into the kiln.

Khay Hor Holdings business development manager K.Y. Chuah informed me that the entire process of making charcoal takes about 30 days. Mangrove or bakau logs are stripped of their bark, cut into approximately 1.6m lengths, and arranged upright along the walls of the seven-metre high kiln.  A fire is lit and the entrance to the kiln, which is about the height of a man, is gradually sealed over a period of time.

Heat control through gradual sealing of the aperture is very important so that the charcoal is not reduced to ashes because of too high temperature. The heat had to be built up to produce a high quality charcoal that burns efficiently.

“There are two stages of fire which we create. The first stage is the ‘big fire’ and the second, we call ‘small fire’. From the ‘big fire’, we will partially seal the entrance to create a ‘small fire’.

A group UTAR students who were visiting
asked to see my sketches. 

“During the first stage, the ‘big fire’ will be allowed to run for approximately ten days. The temperature is raised until it reaches 85-degree Celcius,” added Chuah.

“Subsequently, this ‘big fire’ is converted to ‘small fire’ and this is kept going approximately for 14 days. The temperature would now be between 230- and 250-degree Celcius, after which the fire is extinguished by sealing all the apertures of the kiln.

“Once the fire is extinguished, it takes about a week for the charcoal to cool down before they can be removed from the kiln,” he added. The job is done manually.

 

During the process of firing, steam is released from the mangrove trunks escapes from the kiln through a vent on the roof. This steam condenses into a smoke-smelling dark brown liquid which is believed to have antibacterial properties and is sought after for medicinal application. In the past, kiln workers collect this black liquid to treat skin diseases and remove odour from shoes and old socks.

Today, this charcoal maker has taken a step further to refine the extraction of this liquid by a filtration process, with the end product marketed as mangrove vinegar. According to Chuah, the vinegar can be used to freshen up stale air in a room, as mosquito repellent, and even used to treat certain infections of the skin.

“Because it has strong anti-bacterial properties, you can use it to remove the odour from your shoes. Just spray it into the shoes and leave them overnight to make your shoes smell like brand new.

Mangrove vinegar bottled as
a spray to be used as
insect repellent.

“Since this is an organic product, you can also spray it on your pets, like dogs and cats, to repel ticks and fleas,” he added.

Apart from the mangrove vinegar, his company has also produces charcoal soaps for bathing and cleansing purposes. “This black soap is most effective in removing blackheads and cleaning the skin,” he said.

Mangrove charcoal blocks too are sold at the factory grounds for use as an air purifier as well as décor for the home.  

Papan in peaceful slumber

One of the old houses that remind visitors of Papan's rich past.

Located about 17km from Ipoh off the Ipoh Lumut highway, about three kilometres from Pusing, Papan used to be a bustling town in the late 1800s. It is believed that the Chinese had named it “ka-pan”, which means wooden plank. Word has it that in the past, the “cengal” hardwood that were harvested from the neighbouring jungles had to be brought to the town to be sawn into planks. Incidentally, its new name, Papan, also meant plank in Malay.

However, Papan did not owe its fame to timber but rather tin, according to an elder who saw me painting this old house at the entrance to the town. He said Papan prospered during the glory years of tin mining and when the industry collapsed, the town’s relevance was reduced to only a soon-to-be-forgotten mention in the history books.

During the Japanese Occupation, when Ipoh was bombed, people from the town sought refuge in Papan and its population grew. It was also during this period that Papan earned its “black area” reputation for insurgent activities against the Japanese, and later for communist activities during the Emergency. In 1984, Papan was again thrown into the limelight when its residents staged protests against the storage of radioactive waste in the hills not far from the town.

On the right is the temple, behind which is the cemetary.

Today, Papan is a sleepy hollow that only comes to life only during the Qing Ming Festival or Tomb Sweeping Day when families who used to live there come to the cemetery just outside town to pay their respects to their dearly departed. Many of the old buildings that lined the main street have been abandoned and are slowly inhabited by wild vegetation. There is very little visible economic activity here as most of the younger generation have moved to nearer towns in search of better prospects.

Many descendant families of the early settlers here have also moved to the new Kampung Papan Baru, located a kilometre just outside the old town where there are better facilities. If there was any sign of activity, it would be in the mornings and the area near the community hall or Balai Raya Papan, and at the two old coffeeshops along the main road. Locals meet here to have a cuppa, a meal or just to catch up.

The most modern structure must be the SJKC Papan Chinese primary school which has only 80 pupils comprising 45 boys and 35 girls. This school sits by the main road next to house No. 74, a prominent landmark which once housed the clinic of Sybil Kathigasu, the Malayan-Eurasian nurse who worked with her doctor husband to support the resistance during the Japanese Occupation. Sybil received the George Medal for Gallantry, instituted by King George VI in 1940. The GM was presented to those performing acts of bravery meriting recognition by the United Kingdom and Sybil is said to be the only Malayan woman to have awarded the medal. There is a Jalan Sybil Kathigasu in Ipoh, named after Independence, to commemorate Sybil’s bravery.

The historical edifice that was once Sybil Kathigasu's clinic,
left to the mercy of the weather and time. Newspaper cuttings
pasted on the doors tell a little about its history.

Another historical structure in Papan is the Istana Raja Billah, a stately mansion which is also the town’s largest building in its heydays. Slowly being swallowed by tall grass but still visible from the main road, this mansion belonged to Raja Billah, a Mendailing nobleman from West Sumatera who settled in Papan with his family in the late 1800s. A merchant and tin miner, Raja Billah was also the headman for Papan at the time.

Istana Raja Billah is a pale shade of itself today although it was once refurbished and turned into a museum. It was even used as location for the movie Anna and the King, according to a local who lived nearby. However, neglect in the recent years, he added, had reduced this stately edifice to its derelict self, with parts of the wooden panellings and tiles having been stolen or vandalised.

Just a stone’s throw away from the Istana is the Masjid Papan. Completed in 1888, the mosque sits on land donated by Raja Billah. The structure is made of local hardwood such as cengal, merbau and damar laut. It was designed with one pyramid-shaped zinc-sheet roof sitting on top of another, separated by air vents. The entire structure rests on brick-cement piers. The mosque also did not have a tower and calls to prayer those days were made by hitting a drum known as a taboh.

Contrasts of the old and the new in Langkawi

I was in Langkawi recently and after seeing so much development there, I began to wonder how building materials, scoefically cement and concrete, were brought to the island. Well, my curiosity was soon answered when I rented a car and drove all over this resort island.

Located on the northern side of Langkawi was a huge structure that looked like the space launch pad of Cape Canaveral. Rising over 10 stories high at least, this structure in green and grey turned out to be the Lafarge Kedah Cement Quarry. I decided to stop by and do a piece on it because I had not done one on a cement quarry/factory before.

Since there were no security outposts like most factories in Klang valley, I invited myself into the compound and parked my car along the drive way so that I could get a good view of the factory complex. I had to station myself quite far away to get this main complex into the piece and I had to also work fast because it was almost lunch hour and my presence could attract unnecessary attention.

The Kedah Cement Quarry/Factory owned by Lafarge, located north of the Langkawi Island.

Despite the wave of concreted buildings sweeping across this resort island, I am pleased to be able to find some very beautiful traditional houses in Langkawi.

One such house - there are many more as I have spotted, especially along the non-touristy areas of the island - is at Padang Matsirat, where the Padang Beras Terbakar or Field of Burnt Rice is located. This house (photo below, inset) belongs to Ku Halim Ku Hassan and is a fine looking timber structure built raised on stilts. It has a lovely concrete staircase.

This is a lovely timber house that is also well taken care of. I like the clean surroundings and
 the beautiful Malacca-style concrete staircase leading into the serambi (sitting area) of the house.

Morning's Glory in Kampung Hailam

MORNING GLORY - 304X458MM

This piece was inspired by my trip to a recent traditional village in Malacca that is facing demolition. The village is in Kampung Hailam, off the coastal road north of historic city Malacca. This was one of the houses built in the 1970s, I believe, which is reminiscent of many such houses in traditional villages that are now history. Living in such houses is an experience of few equals like waking up to the chirp of bird in the trees around one's home and listening to the patter of raindrops. Nights are also cooler here than in concrete homes.

Stopping over in Rantau

This is the only zinc-roofed timber-built shop along the main road of Rantau. How long it will be here, I do not know.
Occupied by a fledgling sundry shop business, it will not be long before development erases it to just a memory
 and that is whyI chose to record this in my visual journal.

CONTRARY to what I thought, the name Rantau, a small town not far from Seremban, in Negri Sembilan, did not come from the Malay word rantau (to travel).

Instead, I was told it was derived from the name of a village called Kampung Orang Rantau Panjang Kelang. The village was believed to have been set up by Bugis immigrants who fled the civil unrest in Rantau Panjang in Klang during the mid-1800s and what began as Kampung Orang Rantau Panjang Kelang, had over the years lost its mouthful of a name.

Today, it is known simply as Rantau. The main bustling area in this sleepy hollow is along the main road, Jalan Besar, which is also part of the trunk road linking Seremban, off the expressway, to Linggi and other smaller towns. With a population of 9,000, Rantau was once surrounded by rubber and oil palm plantations but these have made way for housing estates.

I painted this house because it appeared to be the only zinc-roofed timber building that had withstood the ravages of time and development. Known simply as 38 Jalan Besar, it is the premises of Tamilan Store, a small Indian sundry shop. It is two doors away from Sri Bala Thandayuthabani Temple along the main road.

According to a villager who saw me painting from across the street, a huge fire decades ago razed the upper reaches of Rantau town.

“Most of the buildings you see here today are modern ones,”she said. “Most of the shop operators here are Indians and Chinese, but as it’s a small town, many shops are barely surviving.”

This uncle at left was amused that
I chose to paint this small town. 

In the morning until late afternoon, the hawker centre on the main road is a hive of activity, Villagers gather here for a meal and to chat with each other. By evening, there is not much activity. Although the town itself does not have much to offer tourists except a chance to stretch their legs and have a drink, there are several back-to-nature holidays in the Rantau district. They include Rantau Ecopark in Kuala Sawah and Rantau Agro Park in Kampung Seri Lalang.

Anglers may want to check out Kampungstay Haji Sulaiman in Kuala Sawah which offers not only accommodation but also a chance to hook up a whopper at its freshwater lake.
Rantau has produced a few prominent Malaysians such as Maha Sinnathamby, the man behind Greater Springfield, Australia’s largest master-planned development, and the former soccer great, the late Ghani Minhat.

Kelly's unfinished labour of love

This piece was done on a larger sheet, an A3, when I ran out of pages on my sketchpad.

Kellie's Castle, also known as Kellie's Folly, is an incomplete castle located in the Batu Gajah district in Perak. This unfinished mansion, now a ruins, was built by a Scottish planter named William Kellie Smith. It was believed to be a gift for his wife, built beside the Sungai Raya, a tributary of the Kinta River. Some people say that it was for Kelly's son, however.

Today, this tourist attract has received another refurbishment in preparation for the Visit Perak Year 2017. This sketch was made during my recent walkabout up north the state of Perak.

Batu Arang's Coal-aful Past

One of the two mine entrances that lead into the tunnels but they have both been closed. 

BATU ARANG, about 50km north of Kuala Lumpur, derived its name from the Malay word for coal, which is arang batu. After coal was discovered here in the early 1900s, British coal miner John Archibald Russell set up Malayan Collieries Ltd (MCL) to start mining operations in 1913. 

Five thousand miners were employed and they worked around the clock in three shifts to meet the high demand for coal in the region. At the height of its prosperity in the 1930s, Batu Arang was believed to bethe most developed town in Selangor and locals even nicknamed it Mini Gold Hill. It had even its own airstrip which allowed salaries of miners to be air-dropped into the town. 

The Federated Malay States Railways (FMSR) built a railway line to connect Batu Arang to Kuang and within the coal mining township, MCL built its own network of tracks linking the various gantry points of the open cast mines and other subsidiary industries, including its own brick factory. 

The decline in demand for coal began in the 1950s when industries and the railways switched to using diesel. The coal mining era in Batu Arang ended in 1960. In the span of 47 years, 15 million tonnes of coal were believed to have been mined from the deep earth and open cast mines. 

Today, all the entrances to the deep earth mines have been sealed. The open cast mines, located on the hillock behind the police station, are filled with water and turned into a huge lake. Access to the lake has also been fenced up but a worker manning the gates allowed me to enter to take pictures. He claimed that the lake was very popular with anglers. At its deepest point, the lake is at least 200m deep, he said. He showed me bits of coal still embedded in the ground. 

At a coffeeshop near the market in town, I asked some old men why Batu Arang had no high-rise buildings. One of them explained that there was a huge network of mining tunnels running underneath the township. Many of these tunnels had collapsed and damaged the buildings on ground level, so for that reason, building highrises which required heavy piling had been prohibited.

On March 15, 1992, the New Sunday Times carried a feature on the dangers that Batu Arang townfolk faced from sinkholes that had appeared over the years due to the collapse of subterranean mining tunnels. 

The open cast mine is now a lake, visible from the hillock behind the
Police Station.

This painting is of one of the entries to the deep earth mines. This tourist attraction is a few hundred metres from the SKJC Chap Khuan, along a laterite path. There is a signboard that marks its location but you have to walk down a 100m path to get to the entrance which is almost swallowed by undergrowth.

While painting this scene, I had to fend off not only mosquitoes but also some suspicious looking characters who had gone into the bushes in front of me. I later found out that these were drug addicts getting their daily fix. Visitors should also watch out for snakes.

Batu Arang was declared a Heritage Town by the State government some years back and today, remnants of its colourful past include a coal miners' settlement comprising dilapidated brick houses, a row of two-storey shophouses believed to be built in the late 1920s, the police station grounds (which once housed the Gurkha forces barracks and were the premises of the Malayan Collieries Ltd), and an abandoned brick kiln.

CITY SKETCHING: Jalan Ampang

The AIA Building of today. 

Raintrees used to dot the entire of Jalan Ampang but today, not many are left.
These four magnificent trees are not the original inhabitants along
the riverside. They have been planted in the 1980s or 90s, if I am not mistaken.

I spotted a lone street sweeper along the road opposite the AIA Building
and decided to capture it in a sketch.

Jalan Ampang is an old street in the heart of Kuala Lumpur, stretching right from Jalan Tun Razak in the north to Lebuh Ampang in the south. In the 70s, Jalan Ampang was thrown into the limelight because of the hostage-taking drama in the AIA Building by the Japanese Red Army. On Aug 4 1975, a group of the JRA stormed the AIA building which housed the Swedish and American embassies and took 53 employees of the embassies hostage. I decided to sketch this area from the side of the road just after the Chinese New Year period when the traffic is less busy.  In the 70s and 80s, there were no tall buildings in this area except the AIA Building. Today, there are several tall buildings in this stretch, offering shelter from the sun for a good part of the day.

Kiln-ing time in Batu Arang

One of the remaining smokestacks of the abandoned brick kiln.

Did you know that apart from coal, Batu Arang town was also famous for its red firebricks? In fact, the first thing a visitor sees when arriving in Batu Arang is monument built in 2013 in the centre of the town’s roundabout dedicated to this industry. It takes the form of a miniature smokestack, with a black base, another reminder of the township’s coal-mining past. Smaller replicas of similar smokestacks holding up Batu Arang’s nameplates also greet visitors at several entry points into the heritage town.

According to a local, this brick factory employed many staff and the firebricks produced here ranked among the best in Southeast Asia at the time and tonnes from this factory were exported via Singapore port.

 

This smokestack greets visitors to Batu Arang at the roundabout
 in the town centre. The black bottom half represents coal that
was mined from the town's famous open cast mines decades ago.

I drew this smokestack of the abandoned brick kiln from the grounds of the St Michael’s Chapel, about 100 metres away. Although I wanted to trek through the undergrowth to get nearer to the structure, a concerned chapel’s caretaker cautioned me against it because of the presence of poisonous snakes there. There used to be at least five smokestacks in this brick factory, I was told, with the tallest rising over 20 metres.

The Malayan Collieries Ltd (MCL), which operated the coal mines of Batu Arang for 47 years since 1913, was possibly the earliest to produce red facing bricks at this factory for building construction in the township. In the MCL’s Brief Description of the Plant and Activities at Batu Arang as a Guide to Visitors, written in the 1930s, an entry recorded that the clay needed for its brick factory was supplied from earth stripped from the open cast coal mines.

Today, if you drive around Batu Arang, you can still see many of the older buildings sport this firebrick façade, including that of Chap Khuan Chinese Primary School, the old clubhouse building by the town’s padang, the miners’ quarters, as well as some of the houses here.

Reminder of the brick making years of Batu Arang.

One of the houses in the Coal Miners' Settlement, made entirely
of red bricks.

Artists' Colony @ Jalan Conlay, Kuala Lumpur

Ink and wash of the huts at the eastern end of the colony. You can check out the actual scene below,
together with my outdoor set-up.

This is my first outdoor work of 2016. Had been busy with some work and today, being the eve of the City Day, I decided to visit the Artists Colony in Jalan Conlay. This originally started with a colony of traditional wooden huts for artists to work in but over the years, the number of huts dwindled. A car park came up in the middle instead. You could still artists at work here, on weekdays, 9am to 5pm daily. 

The several huts which captured by attention.

This is the west end of the colony. Lots of greenery but as you can see, the colony is hemmed in by development. This is prime land, and I hope the powers-that-be will reserve it for artists to work at. It's the only artistic attraction left in KL.