The Screwjack Letters

Of Moths and Monsoons

Kluang was a small town in South Johore, Malaya, with dense jungle around it, particularly to the North and East. The British Army garrison lay on the Western side of the town. The roads were lined with monsoon drains about six feet wide and lined with concrete slabs. . Some of the houses, especially those well outside the town centre, were built of bamboo covered with leaves of the Attap palm. These were called “Attap Bashas”. We had one such building beside the workshop in which my clerk, L/Cpl Mash preferred to work. This was because our office was upstairs, closer to the corrugated iron roof. He found it too hot, but I put up with it, I needed the telephone.

It often rained heavily, usually at about 4 pm. The rain could be heard coming as it approached over the jungle from the East, arriving loudly as it reached us. The monsoon drains ran in such a torrent that nobody would want to fall in. The rain lasted for about an hour, then all was calm again. In the evenings we heard the “toc toc” bird and on the inside walls of most rooms lived a small flyeating chit-chat lizard, both so - called due to the sounds they made. The day temperature was about 35°C but the air was very humid. We had no washing machines, so our amah did our washing on a paving slab in the garden in the cooler early morning. Many of the road labourers were women, all wearing gloves and wide Chinese hats tied under the chin with a thin veil material to protect their complexions from the sun. The Gurkha working day was from 7am till 2pm to avoid the afternoon sun and heat, but inside the workshop, our working day was 9 to 5. Every morning we all had to take a Paludrine tablet to protect against malaria, and we heard the Imam’s recorded call to prayer from the loudspeaker on the mosque minaret. Sunset was at about 7.15 pm and darkness fell more rapidly than in England. At night we sometimes saw the huge and beautiful Atlas moths.

Early in my time there, I went out one night for a late Satay snack in the town market place. The Satay man had small pieces of meat on wooden skewers cooked over charcoal on a tin like a domestic dustpan. With it was a pot of dipping sauce, the ingredients of which he kept secret. Returning home well after midnight, I saw the flicker of a yellow flame in the darkness. I drove closer and saw a man walking with a flaming torch. Behind him, in single file, were seven more men, each carrying a large bucket. Next day our Corporal Songhurst told me “They’re the Night Shite Shifters, sir. They have to get the empties back fast or people would have a problem on their hands.” Unfortunate wording perhaps.

The various sports and games played in the Kluang garrison were of no interest to me, so I decided that jungle exploration would be more adventurous and interesting. Captain Stan Yates had done a jungle survival course so I asked him to give the Workshop a few tips. This included precautions against Leptospirosis, water treatment, eating snakes and ants, building bed platforms and erecting mosquito nets. We were already familiar with the need for mosquito nets over our beds at night, of course. A truck took us up the Mersing road for a mile, then I and a few volunteers set off into the jungle with the aim of reaching one of the tree covered Gunongs (mountains). We discovered very soon that this was not just a walk through the trees. It was virgin jungle. We had to use machetes to hack every foot of the way, climbing through fallen trees and thorny undergrowth, with ants everywhere. After about two hours of this, to my great relief, we came to a logging track. It would have taken us weeks to get to the Gunong, and I decided we would follow the track back to the road and our truck.

After this chastening experience, I had another idea. I would explore by going through the jungle up the Endau River, on a raft with an engine.

Screwjack

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