Jalan Meldrum,
Jalan Bukit Meldrum and Jalan Sawmill are familiar old roads in the heart of Johor
Baru but do you know the history and origin of these road names?
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| James Meldrum, the Scotsman who started a steam sawmill in Johor Baru Photo Credit: National Archives Singapore |
Meldrum was the name
of Scotsman, James Meldrum, who came to seek his fortune in Johor in the
1800s.
When Meldrum arrived in Iskandar
Puteri, the early name of Johor Baru, the shore was jungle and marshy ground
and a Malay hut stood on the site of the present-day Istana Besar or Grand
Palace.
After a close study of the
coast, he decided that Tanjung Puteri was an ideal spot to set up his steam
sawmill.
Tanjung Puteri was
the site of the state capital while the political centre of Johor was then in
Singapore where the founder, Temenggong Daeng Ibrahim, was based in Telok
Blangah.
The location of Tanjung Puteri,
which overlooks the Johor Straits, was not only scenic and tranquil but its
potential for growth was quickly recognised.
Iskandar Puteri
was conveniently situated about midpoint of the Straits, opposite the Kranji
end of Bukit Timah Road in Singapore.
The road was completed by 1845 and provided easy access for produce to
be transported to Singapore which was then a busy entrepot.
By placing Johor’s economy on a firm footing with the widespread cultivation
of pepper and gambier, he made it possible for the newly established state to
progress and flourish.
With Europe as a
major market, the peak of the gambier trade lasted from the 1830s to 1850s
when Johor became the world’s largest producer of gambier. This industry put Johor on the world map and
brought wealth to the local community.
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| Road sign for Jalan Bukit Meldum on Bukit Meldrum, Johor Bahru |
It was left to his
son and successor, Sultan Abu Bakar, to build on the foundations he laid, and
eventually become known as the Father of Modern Johor.
In his book, History of Johor, Sir Richard Windstedt described Temenggong
Ibrahim as courageous, wise and energetic.
The virgin jungles
of Johor were the state’s earliest resource. The rainforest provided many kinds of jungle
produce such as dammar, rattan, wood oil, camphor, ebony, wax, sandalwood and
other types of wood, that were traditionally collected by the jungle people.
In the 1840s,
gutta-percha was discovered to be the only material suitable for protecting
submarine cables and a demand for this rigid natural latex produced from the
sap of Payena and Palaquiun gutta trees, resulted in an enthusiastic search for
this tough substance in the Johor jungles.
The word, gutta-percha comes from the plant name in Malay, getah perca, which translates as percha sap.
Another valuable
resource from the Johor jungles was timber.
In 1860, Meldrum set up the Johor Steam Sawmill – Johor Baru’s first
industry – at the mouth of Sungai Segget.
He had a system where trees were cut in the jungles and the logs tied
into large rafts and floated down to the steam sawmill. It could take as long as six months for this
process to skillfully tie together up to 2,000 logs by rattan, to make the
rafts.
These rafts were
then floated down the straits to the water’s edge at Iskandar Puteri and hauled
up to the saw-mill to be cut by steam engines. Sawn timber was then exported through Singapore to China, Mauritius,
Java and other countries.
Timber from
Johor was particularly important to India because this saw-mill supplied
sleepers for the Indian Railways!
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| Road sign for Jalan Sawmill, a one-way street near the Central Police Station, Johor Baru |
Timber from this
sawmill was also used to build the first railway in Johor.
Meldrum was the engineer for a proposed
20-mile wooden railway track through dense jungles to Gunung Pulai, which could
potentially be developed into a hill resort for the Europeans in
Singapore.
By 1874, about 10 miles of
the track was laid but the project, however, literally collapsed because they
could not battle the ferocious appetite of termites which simply ate up the
track!
Meldrum was the
son-in-law of Reverend Benjamin Keasberry, a tutor of Sultan Abu Bakar, and
through his help, land at Jalan Gertak Merah was obtained from the Sultan to
build the Holy Light Church.
The
original church, completed in 1886, was constructed from timber supplied by
this sawmill. While the church has
expanded with various buildings, this sturdy original church is still being
used as the Youth Hall.
The wisdom of
choosing Tanjung Puteri as the site for the new state capital resulted in the
continuous growth of Iskandar Puteri.
The harbour at the mouth of Sungai Segget was small but adequate and the
river was deep enough for the entry of tongkangs
and boats of island traders. Sea-going
vessels could dock at the jetty by the sawmill.
For a long time,
this sawmill was the only industrial enterprise in JB and the largest business
concern in the state. After it was
demolished, the site was used for the former Customs and Immigration checkpoint
to Singapore.
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| A 19th century view of the steam sawmill at the mouth of Sungai Segget with Iskandar Hall behind the sawmill, on Bukit Meldrum; Photo Credit: Peter Lee |
Meldrum and his
family lived in Iskandar Hall, a mansion built on the hill behind the
saw-mill. The hill, Bukit Meldrum, was
named after him and its main road is Jalan Bukit Meldrum.
At that time,
Jalan Meldrum, which runs parallel to Jalan Wong Ah Fook – a main road named
after one of JB’s Chinese pioneers – led straight into the steam sawmill.
Jalan Sawmill was the road which bordered the
steam sawmill and remains to this day as a small road under the highway ramp
for Jalan Bukit Meldrum, close to the central Police Station.
Meldrum passed
away in 1904 and was buried in a family plot in Bukit Meldrum. However, in 1971
his remains were transferred to his church cemetery at Jalan Kebun Teh when the
site on this hill was turned into the Customs checkpoint for heavy vehicles.
Roads and a hill
named after James Meldrum is a lasting legacy of a Scotsman who made Johor his
home, ran the Johor Steam Sawmill and made valuable contributions to the state
and beyond.
Further insights into Johor’s early development is documented in Johor – Local History, Local Landscapes 1855 to 1957 (Straits Times Press 2009), a book by professional historian, Datin Patricia Lim Pui Huen, the great-grand-daughter of Wong Ah Fook.
A version of this was published in the April 2016 issue of The Iskandarian
This is very interesting!
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