Give them roots and wings

It was very effective. Samuel loved it. He said, “This is fun”.
He loved being like a big boy.

We started from the Queenstown MRT station, and went to the Church of the Good Shepherd.
After that, we went to Forfar Heights, and proceeded to the Princess House.
Then we walked towards Dawson Road.

We walked along Dawson road, past the beautiful Skyville@Dawson and turned into Kay Siang Road.
We looked at an old running track of the old Hua Yi Boys Chinese Medium School and did some off-road exploration.

Finally, we all took a bus to Tiong Ghee Temple, and then walked to Blk 168A Queensway.

This was our first stop.
Lip Sin told us that in the 1950s, the Government gave out 11 plots of land for religious purposes.
Nine plots were taken up by Churches.

Forfar House was once the tallest public residential housing in Singapore.
It was built by the Singapore Improvement Trust (SIT) (pre-HDB days) and opened on 24 Oct 1956.
It has now been replaced by Forfar Heights, which is quite a pretty estate.
We met some residents who told us about their lives in Queenstown in the past and now.

The third stop – Princess House, now called Blk 332 Alexandra Road.
It was the former HQ for HDB, and hosted foreign dignitaries such as Prince Philip (QEII’s husband),
Princess Margaret (who lent her name to the estate) and Edward Heath (PM for UK).
It became the office for Ministry of Environment in 1972.
One participant shared about what it was like
when he worked in Princess House (Ministry of Environment).
There was a Co-operative which sold groceries and household items at a cheaper price.
It opened in the afternoon and he used to visit it after work to make purchases.
It was meant for Queenstown residents but people who lived elsewhere went to buy things from there too.
He said there would often be long queues.
Looks like our national strength of queuing was developed right from the early days.
Lip Sin also told us about the Hock Lee Bus Riots
– the place where the bus drivers did the sit-in was nearby.

This is the “Hua Yi Boys Chinese Medium School”
(you can see the words printed on the school building in the photo held up by Lip Sin.)
Samuel says this is his favourite part of the trail.
He said he can run around it (although he was doing nothing of that sort, but snacking instead…).
Another participant told us an interesting personal story.
He said that his wife (then girlfriend) and he used to have dates at the running track!
He said that they must have climbed over the school fence! Lol!

This was a relatively new “discovery”, Li Hong from MyCommunity told me.
It was Elias’ favourite part of the trail.
We had to walk through a short forested area, to two old army buildings.
The first had only the wall left, and the second was a small building with a dark and damp enclosed space.
There is apparently a third building, further in.
Elias said it is not likely to be an Army building. He gave some reasons. Hmm..
It sounds quite plausible. I would go along with him (But of course! I am his mother).

This is Tiong Ghee Temple.
Some verbal history about the place from Li Hong :
In 1928 the Ang family bought 7 acres of land in the area, and built it up.
They did not want to go to Chinatown or Geylang because it was too crowded there.
Li Hong also interviewed Mr Ang, whose forebears were among the first settlers.
Sadly, he had to move out of his childhood home during the resettlement. He now stays in Choa Chu Kang.

This was our last stop.
We met Mr Fernandez who has been staying in the block for 40 years.
He said that he had applied for a flat at Farrer Road but was given this instead.
He grabbed it because at that time, getting a flat was like finding a needle in a haystack.
When he first moved in, there were cracks in the flat.
That was because the Government was in a great hurry to build as many flats as possible.
He had to spend much money on repairs, and he was quite angry at that time.