Jerome takes part in a recent walking tour by the Nature Society, winding through some four kilometres along the old Jurong railway line. In the early days of modern Singapore, the railway line served as one of the main arteries feeding goods as well as ferrying people into the Jurong industrial complex.
Then, and probably less so today, Jurong carried the sense of a place being very far and remote from ‘civilization’:
Jurong was in my childhood, one of the ends of the earth, being in what I had envisaged as a forsaken part of the island, good only for the seafood at Tuas village, that meant the long ride along the long and winding old Jurong Road that took one past the creepy stretch where the old Bulim cemetery was located. It was also the object of many school excursions to the area which had in the 1970s, the Jurong Birdpark added to the list of attractions that meant the long ride on the chartered bus which would pass the wonderfully wide tree lined avenue named International Road and culminate in the smell that we would always look forward to with anticipation – that of the aroma of chocolate that would invariably waft out of the Van Houten factory that stood on Jalan Boon Lay.
Of course, this is not the case and Jurong has served as the industrial backbone for Singapore for a long time now, so long that even now the railway has fallen into disuse but has left behind the patterns of progress in our landscape. Find out about the different sights along the Old Jurong Line in Jerome’s post here.
1 Response
Nice black and white photo of the railway.
Posted on February 18th, 2011 at 6:07 am
Add A Comment