Singapore – 50 years later

It has been 50 years or so since I walked the streets of this city. A city that I visited many times with my captain father, Boris Labzin when I was somewhere between 10 and 15 years old. It was so different, so sophisticated, so orderly back in the 1960’s compared to my hometown of Jakarta. And now there are gardens from the sea where once it was the waterfront.

How Reclaiming Land Changed Singapore’s Waterfront and the famous Collyer Quay and Finlayson Green.

Collyer Quay 1960s – Image: Ghetto Singapore

My father’s ship used to ride at anchor in the harbour and to get on shore we had to hail a passing sampan who would take you to Collyer Quay. And lo and behold, as you climbed the steps from the sampan onto the quay, you entered a new world. One of curry puffs, pedestrian crossings, high-rise buildings with lifts – all unknown in Jakarta.

So, 50 years later, I am back in Singapore and I want to go to the very place that was the gateway to a new world for me, the corner of Collyer Quay and Finlayson Green (even those very English names evoke a sense of orderliness).

And I get my wish, here I am in the very spot that I used to be, but there is no water nearby, even though it is still called Collyer Quay. I mean what is a Quay without a waterfront.

I feel disoriented, surely this is the place, but where is my beloved waterfront, the one that has kept my memories alive for all these years!

Puzzled I leave the site of the mystery and upon my return home, I search through the old family documents for an explanation. I find it in a 1964 Singapore bus company’s brochure – a street map of the area and sure enough there is Collyer Quay – on the waterfront as it should be!

Curiously the bus company is called the Singapore Traction Company and it is an incorporated business in the UK – probably they were worried about Singapore at sometime no longer being a British Colony.

I then compare the 1964 street map with the current one and realise that there has been a whole lot of reclamation work that has occurred and indeed Collyer Quay is now a long way from the waterfront. Relief at the clarification and sadness at the changes that have occurred since my childhood flood my thoughts. You can’t stop progress – but don’t you hate it sometimes!