KUALA PILAH HISTORY 13 NOSTALGIA PICTURES

     

       KUALA PILAH HISTORY 13  NOSTALGIA PICTURES

                                          THE JALAN ULU MUAR STORY 1955-2013


The Ulu Muar road in KP was perhaps a later addition to the town of Kuala Pilah in its over a century old history and  probably built around 1927. The reasons for this are many fold.

Kuala Pilah itself started as Ulu Pilah (pekan Lama near present police station) facing the Muar River which was the main access to Kuala Pilah when in the late or mid 1980s there was discovery of tin. There was no credible road link to KP from Seremban or Bahau although there may have been a track to Bahau via villages such as Kepis and Juasseh . Those were the days of river transport and even boats were pulled from one river system to another when it was convenient to drag or carry the boat itself across. from one river systen to another to continue the journey. Such crossing points were called "bukit penarik" and one between the Serting and Jempol and  Muar rivers was well known as recently as the late 1980s. The advent of the new communicator the railway changed all that as rail lines in the form of the FMS railway in 1910 connected Bahau to KP for transport of goods - especially the lucrative tin discovered and mined in Parit Tinggi and Betis.

 

As the Ulu Pilah out grew its narrow base near the banks of the Ulu Muar the town by now under colonial administration expanded westwards to where Lister Road is now The Main Road or Cart Road was there at least by 1898 as the Temple of the Three Gods was built by that year. the Lister Memorial was up by 1900 and the Pangung wayang or Sun Talkies (later Pearl Theatre) is clearly dated 1916 .The towkay Tan Puan mansions on Jalan Yam Tuan opposite the Bus Station today and nearby shops are dated 1927 as are several shops on the 3rd street of the town Jalan Tung Yen. 

The Ulu Muar road of 1955 - picture taken from 196 Jalan Tung Yen rear balcony

Note several long gone structures

      Lamp post with curved lamp holder in the middle of the road

      A real Bullock Cart near the entrance to the old bus stand 

            A luxuriant angsana tree which blossomed fragrant yellow every April to May

    The barely visible Shell petrol pump, folowed by one of 2 post boxes in KP 

    And the Standard Oil(later Mobil, Later Esso) station with a Morris Minor car

 

                                                                                  

 

Pangung wayang 1916 Clearly marked - on Jalan Yam Tuan

 

 

 

 

1990 KP Bus Station on Jalan Ulu Muar

 

 

 

2013 Bus Station on Jalan Ulu Muar

 

cars cars cars everywhere

No Lamp Post in the middle of the Street

No fragarant Angsana tree

No Standard oil or Shell or Post Box and

NO BULLOCK CART !

 

 

 

more to follow

devamp@gmail.com

KUALA PILAH HISTORY 11 NOSTALGIA PICTURES 2

 

 

 

KUALA PILAH HISTORY 11

 

THE ULU MUAR  AND PEKAN LAMA STORY

 

Ulu Muar River and the reinforced old wooden bridge that was a the 1910  railway bridge that now is a secondary road bridge linking KP, and Sawah Lebar to the present KP-Bahau road

 

 

 

Kuala Pilah has undergone significant changes in the  past  more than a century  since its founding in the mid 1800s or so .

 

There was an old town near to the Ulu Muar River, off Bahau Road   above in the days when the upper reaches of the River Muar was the "highway " to the village of Kuala Pilah. Kuala Pilah like most interior villages of Malaya probably depended on a variety of jungle produce like rattan, darmar resin, jungle fruits and perhaps the lucrative aromatic wood catted gahru. That is until tin was discovered in the area. Tin mines started up in what is now the Parit Tinggi area on the left side of the present KP Bahau road. At that time Bahau may have been connected to KP by tracks rather than roads (the road to Bahau via Kepis still exists albeit a  very narrow one. Kampungs such as Betis near Parit Tinggi were top mining areas and in the early years tin that was mined  by local and Chinese miners was presumably  sent by river Muar down stream for export . That is until the late 1800s when the British colonial authorities decided to build a rail link to the Singapore-Bahau rail  line for ease of transport of tin and other goods . What seems the more  logical link to Seremban was not feasible in the days when railways as a primary means of travel,  the Bukit Putus barrier between Seremban and Kuala Pilah was simply too high (and expensive) for a rail crossing to be built. Bahau on the other hand seemed so near,  just 24 km (16miles) across flat lands and with only a few bridges to build. What was also a deciding factor in the 1910 April 1st opening of the Bahau- KP rail link was the relatively few motorised vehicles in use in Malaya for transport of goods so vital for the economy. Indeed it is likely that the development of KP preceded that of Seremban  as the readily available Ulu Muar river was the first "highway," followed by the railway and only around the 1920s the building of roads to link towns in the state to cater for motorised vehicles. Sesmban on the other hand had no large Muar River available and was a good 30 Km from the sea (Port Dickson) The Rail link faded out in the late twenties and motor vehicle took over as the main mover of goods that could reach remote areas far from rivers and the fixed railway tracks and needed no rolling stock.

 

 

          Ulu Pliah or Kampong Pekan Lama as it is known now (see recent board pointing to Kampung Pekan Lama) opposite the District Offices, KP  

 

 

 

                                        Sign boards near District offices KP point to History

 

 A palatial traditional 3 storey  house in Pekan Lama. The old villages is on the left bank of the River Muar upstream and the connection to the main Bahau Road is by a very steep road

 

 

The Main KP-Bahau road after the Muar River Bridge  has a thriving iron mongers' village that catered to people of the district since the early 1900s or earlier. The rows of attap roofed shops wooden  and houses have been replaced  by zinc roofed houses  sheds and shops but remain to date

 

The site of the building that Sun Yat Sen

 

A little known piece of History of KP is the site of what was probably the home of Towkay Tung Yen ( a.k.a.Deng Zeru). a wealthy Tin miner from Canton (Guangdong) who came to make his fortune in the Parit Tinggi Tin  mines in the late 1800s . He became a nationalist (Kuomintang) leader from China and a friend of the revolutionary Sun Yat Sen. When (like all revolutionaries) Sun was hunted by the agents of the Emperor he sought refuge at the home of his friend Tung Yen  - in a hill top  bungalow on the site of this modern recently built palatial bungalow on the right bank of the Ulu Muar River and opposite Ulu Pilah or Pekan Lama . The old bungalow a wooden 2 storey building remained well into the 1970s and was in the emergency years the Estate Bungalow of the English Estate Manager, and later left abandoned . Tung Yen after whom Jalan Tung Yen is still named  contributed in so many ways to Kuala Pilah's growth, such as building the Lister Memorial in 1900,  starting the first English School in 1908, and helping obtain land for the Chinese cemetery in Parit Tinggi. He was a well known Koumintang leader in Malaya and a fund raiser for the Chinese nationalist cause. He left for Canton in 1920 when Sun Yat Sen invited him to become the warden for mines in Canton. He is reported to have died in 1934 in Canton from a lung infection.

 

 

More on Kuala Pilah History to Follow

devamp@gmail.com