But will Singaporeans be trusted to use the place responsibly when they get there? I meandered along the immaculate grassy path, the lawn resplendent in the light rain and stopped by a noticeboard that had 12 do-not signs. Tampines Eco Green is a park. It isn’t skydiving over the Grand Canyon. Yet NParks folks are compelled to reinforce 12 do-nots, including the insistence on no bird tapping, with an illustration of a brutish, muscular fist squeezing the life out of a startled sparrow. I was sincerely flattered that NParks assumed I possessed the speed, fitness and dexterity required to catch a kingfisher with my bare hands whilst riding a rusty circus bike with its razor-like seat wedged up my arse, but it was never going to happen.
The issue of trust remains a sticking point in new Singapore. Like the permanently closed Toa Payoh Viewing Tower, public facilities and attractions are built for residents, but they are not always accompanied with a sincere belief that they will be used sensibly. If Australians should be proud of anything, it’s their stunning state and national parks. Many happy weekends were spent with our baby daughter strapped to my chest as we hiked, climbed and explored our way across as many of them as possible. A single park ranger often managed territories capable of swallowing Singapore and Johor whole. Some parks had no toilets, not even an Aussie long drop, and one or two had no dustbins. Yet the parks and forests were mostly spotless, with few of those anal do-not signs. They were not required. Common sense sufficed. In Singapore, those signs typify the socio-political chicken and egg conundrum. Are the signs there because Singaporeans need to be spoon-fed? Or are Singaporeans spoon-fed because those signs have always been there? Either way, there remains a distinct lack of public ownership in places like Tampines Eco Green.
At one of the freshwater ponds, I picked out a Brahminy kite on a tree branch. When I visited the Ocean Grove Nature Reserve in Victoria, which shares a similar habitat to Tampines Eco Green, I stumbled upon my first wild echidna. For those of you who have yet to see one of only two egg-laying mammals (monotremes) on the planet, the echidna is possibly the daftest-looking creature in Australia (where there is stiff competition). The echidna belongs in a kindergarten arts and craft session, with its plasticine nose and cute furry ball covered in hand-painted straws. When I spotted the fuzz ball, it did that idiotic freezing thing where it thought, Ssh, if I keep really still, he will not see me looking like a curled-up tribal headdress. I will cease to be visible.
Two distinct groups had made it possible for me to see an echidna up close there and a Brahminy kite here. The Ocean Grove Nature Reserve was the handiwork of independent nature lovers, a group of like-minded residents who came together to provide a green corridor for native wildlife whose native woodland was being bulldozed for housing estates. That was over 40 years ago. Today, the reserve’s quaint visitor centre is still manned by volunteers. Tampines Eco Green was conceptualised, devised, landscaped and managed by the government but has yet to fully capture the public imagination.
Perhaps the park needs a McDonald’s.
Twenty-one
TIME and low tide wait for no man. I had just over two hours. I had my three-year-old daughter with me. I had no choice. I made a rash and impulsive decision. She was coming with me to Chek Jawa. Chek Jawa is the rocky shore off the southeastern corner of Pulau Ubin, which is off the northeast coast of Singapore. I had just collected her from school near Haig Road, which is off Mountbatten Road in the east, which is not near Chek Jawa. I checked the time. It was already 3.35 p.m. Low tide at Chek Jawa was at 6 p.m., when it would be around 0.5 metres, the ideal height for spotting marine life. I picked up my oblivious little girl and quickened my step towards Mountbatten Road. We needed to be at Changi Point Ferry Terminal further north within 30 minutes to have a realistic shot at catching a bumboat to power father and daughter across Serangoon Harbour, rent a bicycle with a child seat on the back at Pulau Ubin Main Jetty, somehow navigate our way through the unfamiliar jungle terrain and beat the tide off Chek Jawa.
“We’re going on a boat adventure,” I cried, clutching my daughter to my chest as I trotted along the pavement, frantically flagging approaching taxis and perspiring heavily. “You’re going to be Dora and I’m going to be that Boots. Are we ready? Right, vamanos!”
“No, Daddy, you know you can’t be Boots,” she sighed. “You’re not a monkey.”
She’s at that age.
I hailed a taxi, threw in my rucksack, bundled my startled daughter into the back seat and buckled the seatbelt across the both of us.
“Changi Point Ferry Terminal,” I mumbled, as we pulled away.
“Ah, Bedok, sure, no problem,” replied the chirpy taxi driver.
“No, no, Changi Point Ferry Terminal, beside Changi Village. We want to get a bumboat.”
The taxi driver peered at the clock on her dashboard and then up at me in the rear-view mirror.
“You go Pulau Ubin now?” she queried. “It’s quite late, no?”
“Daddy, Daddy ...” my little one suddenly interjected.
I raised my forefinger to my lips.
“Not now, just wait, I’m talking to the taxi driver ... Yes, I’ve got to do some work on the island so I thought I’d take my daughter along. Let her explore the forest.”
“Wah, you’re a good father, ah,” she beamed back at me through the rear-view mirror.
“Daddy, Daddy ...” my daughter continued, tapping me continuously on the forearm.
“Yes, what is it?”
“The taxi driver’s not a man, Daddy,” she whispered conspiratorially. “The taxi driver is a woman. Is that OK, Daddy?”
“It’s fine, just relax. We’re on an island adventure.”
“You said it was a boat adventure.”
“OK, it’s a boat adventure first. Then it’s an island adventure.”
“Daddy, I need to do a wee wee.”
We had turned into Tanjong Katong Road. The slip road to the ECP was ahead. My daughter would never hold out along the ECP.
“Sorry, can you pull over, please,” I exclaimed. “My daughter needs to pee urgently.”
Convinced she was one of the Dukes of Hazzard, the taxi driver screeched across two lanes and slammed on the brakes just metres before Amber Road, allowing me to tumble out of the taxi and position my daughter behind a tree.
Along Changi Coast Road, she had to go again. This never happens on Dora the Explorer. We pulled over beside Changi Airport’s perimeter fence and she sprinkled the grass in front of a No Trespassing sign at the entrance of a military building. My girl knows how to mark her territory. As we crouched together in front of a military zone, she grinned up at me.
“Daddy, I won’t do any more wee wees until we get to the island, OK?”
She lasted as long as Changi Point Ferry Terminal. After a third pee in half an hour and a quick call to book a doctor’s appointment for the cascading kid, we waited only five minutes for a bumboat. Thanks to a family of six and the commonsensical approach of the boat’s skipper, who was supposed to wait for 12 passengers before departing but had accepted that was unlikely to happen at 4 p.m. and was at least guaranteed a packed charter on his return trip, we were soon bouncing up and down on a blue paint-chipped wooden box seat across Serangoon Harbour.
My daughter’s wide-eyed, infectious enthusiasm reminded me what a quaint journey the bumboat provides. Only 10 minutes long, the trip offered fine views of the Changi coastline and passed those gargantuan container vessels. (“It’s the Madagascar ship! It’s the Madagascar ship! Where’s Gloria the Hippo?” my daughter shouted at the confused bumboat driver, whose gap-toothed smile accentuated his sun-ravaged, craggy features.) Most of all, the ride was fun, cheap and real. The bumboat costs $2.50 per person. A two-minute ride on a plastic cartoon character inside a shopping mall, rocking backwards and forwards with all the dramatic dynamism of my nan in an armchair, costs $2. My daughter enjoys those rides, too. But she adored the bumboat.
We arrived at Pulau Ubin Main Jetty and the old spring in the
step returned. Returning to the island is always invigorating. Pulau Ubin continues to resist the call of the concrete. Its villagers and its biggest supporters are united in their efforts to keep the kampongs and preserve a fortress of solitude away from the superhuman heroics across the harbour. They can still be cheeky buggers when an ang moh enquires about hiring a bike.
“That’s six dollars,” the young, smiley Chinese guy said.
I giggled. I loved the impudence.
“Come on, ah, you think I got ‘tourist’ stamped on my forehead, is it?” I replied. “I know I got the backpack, but I’m not a backpacker. I live over there. I want the bike for less than two hours.”
“Ok lah, five dollars, because I got to give you the bike with the child seat.”
He gave me a photocopied map of the island, without being asked, and pencilled in the route to Chek Jawa. Tarmac roads covered only half the journey. The remote forest in the east had only gravel paths and dirt tracks, some with steep inclines. I admired the sensitive desire to protect the fragile ecosystems and keep human encroachment to a minimum, but I knew the clock was ticking and I wasn’t particularly enamoured by the prospect of transporting my little Cleopatra up a rocky, muddy unstable hill.
Still, my blissfully ignorant daughter was eager for the jungle stage of the adventure. (Every adventure must consist of three stages and the jungle was stage two. She constantly chanted, “Boat ... jungle ... Chek Jawa ... boat, jungle, Chek Jawa ...” from the back seat, which will mean nothing to anyone who hasn’t seen Dora the Explorer. Judging by the puzzled looks of villagers, they hadn’t seen Dora the Explorer.) I pedalled quickly along Jalan Ubin and Jalan Durian (terrific road names), the tyres taking advantage of the tarmac as we pointed out some parakeets in the trees and played animal-spotting games. We even sang songs aloud as we passed locals who waved back. It was glorious.
The hills almost beat me. On two occasions, my skinny calves revolted and I was forced to get off the bike, bend my knees, crouch over the handlebars and push my little girl over the bumpy terrain and deeper into the jungle. I sensed her anxiety. Just an hour earlier, she had left school and skipped out into a familiar world of tarmac, tower blocks and traffic. Like all children, she takes comfort in routine. And now she was being pulled up an uneven slope by her panting father beneath a jungle canopy that was blocking out much of the daylight and making scurrying, scampering, rustling noises in every direction. That made me nervous. She is encouraged to be as independent, resourceful and outdoorsy as possible, particularly in safe, secure and often cosseted Singapore. But as we plunged further into an isolated forest that I had never visited before, let alone with my little one, a thought danced around my dizzying, sweat-drenched head. Had I gone too far with a three-year-old girl?
When a snorting wild boar blocked our path, I suspected that I might have.
The image was dreamy, unreal. It was not possible. I squeezed the brakes slowly and quietly. The hefty creature stood 10 metres away, sniffing the air in our general direction, but otherwise ignoring us. I had seen wild boars before on Pulau Ubin, but never this close and certainly never in the company of my daughter. Paternal instincts kicked in so quickly, they alarmed me. I was terrified. There was precious cargo on board. My straddled legs took a couple of backward waddling steps to ease away from the animal. It glimpsed over at the noise. It was about a metre in length, a greyish brown and obviously well fed. Being late afternoon, it was foraging for food. I had no intention of disturbing its dinner, not with my daughter behind me. Most boars on Ubin are used to human interaction, but if they feel threatened, they can charge. That has never happened on Dora the Explorer either.
Eventually, the boar strolled lazily to the other side of the path and continued to scavenge for scraps in the undergrowth. That was my cue. Steering the bike towards the opposite side of the path, I pedalled slowly towards the native mammal. If we kept our heads down and our mouths shut, we would soon be at the Chek Jawa ranger station and laughing about the unexpected twist in the adventure. We approached the wild boar. My daughter passed within a couple of metres of Babe’s big brother. Just a few seconds more. We were almost clear.
“Oh, look, Daddy, a warthog, a warthog. See Daddy, a warthog.”
My daughter started jabbing a finger excitedly at the animal, which was now peering up at her.
“Look, Daddy, a warthog, a warthog,” she shouted. “Pumbaa, Pumbaa, Lion King, Lion King.”
“Ssh, be quiet, mate,” I whispered frantically. “You’ve got to stop talking now.”
“It’s a warthog, Daddy. Look! A warthog, a warthog,” she shouted. “Stop! Have a look! It’s a warthog.”
“It’s not a warthog,” I hissed desperately. “It’s a wild boar and we don’t want to upset it so can you please just be quiet until we get right past it.”
“It is a warthog,” she cried.
“All right, all right, it’s a fucking warthog. Please, stop talking.”
There was a brief silence.
“Daddy ... Mummy says you’re not to say that word, Daddy. That’s a naughty word.”
“Sorry, you’re right. I shouldn’t say that word. I’m really sorry. But let’s just keep quiet. I don’t want to disturb the wild boar.”
“It’s a warthog.”
“All right, all right, it’s a bloody warthog then.”
“Daddy ...”
“Yes, I know, I can’t say that word either. I’m sorry. Right, we’ve passed the ... animal ... let’s go. Hold on really tight.”
As the wild boar moved away from the roadside, adrenalin took hold and I raced towards the Chek Jawa ranger station. The bike stands were a blur. So was the gate that I sped through, along with the sign above the gate that insisted that all vehicles had to be left outside the gate. I hurtled down the path and reached the ranger station.
“Hey, hello, you cannot bring your bike in here,” the two park rangers behind the counter chorused in unison.
I unbuckled my daughter and dumped her on a bench with a bottle of Yakult and dropped the map and rucksack beside her. My heart was pounding. She, on the other hand, had never looked happier.
“Do you think that was a mummy or a daddy warthog?” she asked between slurps.
“Er, I’m not really sure. Wild boars are usually boys, but then ...”
“Excuse me, you can’t bring your bike in here,” the two park rangers chorused again.
I had forgotten about them. I nodded my apologies, opened a bag of crisps, threw them at my delighted daughter who started to devour them gleefully, ordered her to wait on the bench, pedalled furiously back to a bike stand, padlocked the wheel, sprinted back to my little one, slumped beside her on the bench and stole a gulp from her Yakult bottle. I checked the time. It was 4.40 p.m. I had collected her from school only 70 minutes earlier. She finished her drink and I almost lost a finger when I prevented her from shovelling another handful of crisps into her mouth, but we were ready. It was time to see what new Singapore had done with Chek Jawa.
The belated discovery and preservation of Chek Jawa is a familiar, but fabulous, story worth recounting briefly. In some respects, the beginnings of new Singapore were unearthed at the hidden cape of Pulau Ubin, with an active citizenry rousing and organising itself to take ownership of the threatened area and a softer government acceding to conservationists’ requests. Ultimately, Chek Jawa is a story of hope, in which environment trumped economy and the simple needs of a natural beauty were placed above the greedy demands of an urban brute. After nature enthusiasts recognised that the unique rugged wetlands had so many largely undisturbed ecosystems in one small area—sandy beach, rocky beach, seagrass lagoon, coral rubble, mangroves and coastal forest—the government agreed to defer land reclamation plans in December 2001. Chek Jawa was spared, in the short term. The 10-year deferment means the bulldozers could now muscle their way through the mangroves at any time, but there are no reports yet of a blueprint to batter the rich biodiversity. Watch this space an
d pray.
Call me naively optimistic but I believe new Singapore’s intervention in 2007 just might have spared Chek Jawa. Nature lovers had been visiting the treasure trove on an ad-hoc basis since 2001, but in July 2007 the country made a firm commitment to the forest’s future. The secrets of the six major habitats were made more accessible to the public with little harm done to their residents’ homeland. A visitor centre, a viewing jetty, a 21-metre-tall tower above the coastal canopy and, best of all, a 1-kilometre-long boardwalk that includes mangrove and coastal loops allowed visitors to conduct their own DIY wildlife tours without disturbing the inhabitants. The mangroves had their mudskippers, hornbills hovered around the forest, crabs scuttled out of rocky and sandy shore crevices, sea cucumbers and squids hung out at the seagrass lagoon and octopuses could be spotted among the coral rubble, all under the boardwalk, down by the sea. But the tide had to be right. Anything around 0.5 metres was ideal. We were an hour away from that height but the water level was close enough and low enough to see marine life.
Having been cooped up, strapped in and bounced around the child seat above my back tyre, my little tyke savoured her newfound freedom, tearing off down the coastal boardwalk like Bindi Irwin.
“Look, a big black bird,” she cried, stopping suddenly to point at the distant seabed exposed by the low tide.
It was a purple heron, next to some egrets, but I was pleased with her eagerness to continue the animal-spotting game after the close encounter with Pumbaa on the path earlier. Further along the boardwalk, we were treated to a fine performance from an orchestra of hundreds of orange-and-white fiddler crabs, each playing its larger claw like a Stradivarius (hence the nickname). People pay a fortune to witness the millions of red crabs on Christmas Island and we had a sandy carpet of fiddlers below us. I’m not pretending the fiddler crabs of Chek Jawa are a natural wonder to rival the annual red crab migration on Christmas Island, but they are well worth the $2.50 bumboat fare.
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