We’re just in time for our National Day, with this week’s Pixels & Grains bringing you some old pictures of actual celebrations, with some pictures contributed by David Papworth and Pakcik Salleh.

Lion dancers outside Government House

The above photo and the next three, as well as their captions, are from David Papworth, who owns a collection of his father’s old photos shot during his service with the RAF at Tengah, dated from June 1967 to December 1969. He has scanned several hundreds of these photos such that they can be accessed by others, so feel free to check out the rest of his pictures on Picasa here.

Coloured flags seem to play an important part of the parades

One of the many bands

These are dragon dancers

Here the lion dancers are getting ready outside Government House.

These next four photos and their accompanying captions were sent to us by Pakcik Salleh, a Flickr user (whose Flickr sets you can check out here) also happens to be the uncle of Taufiq Jaafar, who had shared with us The Story of Lorong Mydin, featured in previous episodes of Pixels & Grains.

Supreme Court – 1986: Both the Supreme Court and City Hall are in the process of be turned into the National Arts Gallery.

Padang – 1986: ‘Padang’ is the Malay word for ‘field’.

Padang looking East (This photo was taken on February 2, 2010)

An aerial view of the Padang, where you can see the Supreme Court building somewhere near the bottom left of the picture.

National Stadium: The Stadium has now been demolished.
This old photo showed us filming Fandi Ahmad for a children program.

The National Stadium was also one of the many places where our previous National Day Parades have been held, but it’s now been demolished to to make way for the Singapore Sports Hub, expected to be opened in 2014.

We hope this post has given you a little insight on National Day Parades held in the late 1960s, keeping in mind that we had only gained independence on August 9, 1965. As we can see from the pictures above, the parades were not as fancy as what we can expect this year with the lights and fireworks, but we still see the same spirit!

Have a great National Day holiday, and be sure to stay tuned for next week’s Pixels & Grains post.

Also, if you wish to share your pictures with us just like David and Salleh did, be sure to email us at yesterdaysg@gmail.com.