Standing on once a vital telecommunications centre in Sarawak.
THE sighting of a crocodile sunbathing on a mud bank or cruising leisurely in a river does not make news. On the other hand, a crocodile on its way to a government office during office hours is news of public interest.
Early this week, a four-foot long reptile was sighted lurking in the monsoon drain near the district council building close to the Lundu Bazaar.
It must have been hungry and was looking for food. In the wrong place, at the wrong time. Or it simply got lost.
The news about the sighting must have caused some panic amongst the council’s workers and the people in the bazaar. It was the news of the day for the whole district; even getting into the pages of the venerable The Borneo Post for the benefit of the ‘Lundustanis’ living or working outside the district.
My memories flooded back when I read about the poor thing. On that very spot where the Lundu District Council Building now stands there was a tall wireless mast, erected during the Rajah Brooke’s time.
In the 1950s, we boys were banned from flying our kites in the vicinity of that mast. The police under my brother Bunseng’s charge would go after us without fear or favour. At the time, though we kids didn’t know or care about, the place was out of bounds to ordinary visitors except those who wanted to send telegrams.
Nearby was a building housing the Post and Telegraph office-cum-living quarters for the wireless operator and his family.
The name of the operator was Pak Ali from Kuching. Incidentally, digressing a bit here, he was a contemporary of my mother’s relative, Bujang Suboh, from Undup. Aki Bujang was working in the Kuching office of P&T as a technician.
At the time, the method used for transmitting messages was the Morse Code. Pak Ali, a pinang-chewing government official, was the only operator in the district. He needed peace and quiet while at work. One day, his sons, Anai (Madian) and Katon (Sabri), were running in and around the telegraph office while their dad was punching on his Morse Code key. He stopped, marched the boys to the chicken house at the back of the office, locked them up there and went back to sending a telegram from the DO to the Resident at Kuching.
All Pak Ali’s children were my contemporaries; besides Anai (Madian) and Katon (Sabri), there were Man, Dayang, Safahan, and Yut.
All the boys went to St Thomas’ School in Kuching; Anai retired as senior auditor in the Audit Department, Katon became a senior manager in a big plantation company in Sabah, while Man and Safahan became teachers. All are successful in life. The last I heard about the girls was that Hajjah Yut had gone to umrah a couple of times. Wow!
Back to Lundu
Behind that telegraph office was a badminton court called Mau Mau, named after the Kenyan Liberation Movement led by Jomo Kenyatta. It was built by the DO, Malcolm McSporran, with help from the chief clerk Tony Komurusammy.
Around this spot a library popularly known as the Gallery has been built. I hope the district office has kept all the records connected with Pak Ali’s quarters and his communication equipment and records of messages sent out and messages received.
I mention all these names of people and places because they are part of the history of hardly an acre of land in the Lundu District. Unless someone writes down important events and people from memory, history of the Tiang Wireless (the wireless mast), of the Ali Family and the others will disappear into oblivion forever.
Even the story on the reptilian intruder would be forgotten if not written down and kept in the Gallery.
Talking about crocodiles, Lundu has produced two well-known Pak Awang, crocodile catchers: Pak Jalil and his grandson whose name has escaped me for the moment, and Tuai Kampung Nyalih Nandi, of Temelan. Both have passed on for eternal rest.
Were these two bomohs still alive, the Fire and Rescue Department officers would not have been necessary to handle that croc near the LDC Building. Nyalih could have successfully handled the reptile. He was so well known as an excellent crocodile catcher (tukang alir) among the wildlife department officers in Kuching that he was regularly hired to catch man-eating reptiles in other rivers in Sarawak. His latest successful catch was the crocodile that had been terrorising the bathers at Siniawan about 10 years ago.
I remember Pak Jalil’s grandson. While out hunting for the big crocodiles with grandpa he was collecting the juveniles as well for sale in the market, each for 50 cents.
For several decades, thanks to Pak Jalil and TK Nyalih, there had been no news about a crocodile catch in Lundu, until recently – the terror at Selampit on the Kayan and now the ‘little’ one, which had been caught in the drain in the vicinity of LDC office.
What was his mission there: to report on harassment by humans now that crocs are no longer totally protected as endangered species under the Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites)? Or as there are so many of them in the Kayan River now, did it simply want to be independent of mum and dad in terms of human prize?
The main river in Lundu (how it got the name ‘Kayan’, I can’t tell) is no longer safe to swim in, as we used to do after school.
Questions
Where is the belian mast now? Cut into pieces by the contractors building the LDC building? Where are Pak Ali’s telegraphic equipment and records of messages sent and messages received? Can all these be traced and, if found, placed in the Gallery?
Photographs are important too. A hundred feet from the Tiang Wireless was the only photograph shop in town owned by Ah Chik. Unfortunately, in the fire of 1950, this shop and lots of photographs and negatives were destroyed.
I’m keeping a couple of photographs of the town before it was destroyed in that fire. If the local library (Gallery) needs to display them in an exhibition in future, I am willing to lend them to the organisers. Not many photographs of the place taken during the colonial period are easily traceable except from the collection of my old friend, the late Bong Siew Min. His family may still keep valuable photos of anything Lundu.
I hope the photo of the crocodile with its catchers from the Fire and Rescue Department will be exhibited in the Gallery. In 50 years’ time, that photograph will be an evidence that a crocodile had the cheek to terrorise government officers hard at work in a building where Pak Ali was at one time busy sending and receiving telegrams on his Morse Code equipment.
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