Altavista was the search engine to use in my new days of the internet and i sat looking at the search box thinking about what words i should type into it. I wondered if there was anything out there about our old school and tried different words and combinations. Woodlands Singapore NZ Service School Brats
...nothing, there was nothing.
However, i did find a yahoo group called Ex South East Asia Brit Brats Schools which was managed by a lady named Jean Rontree. I remembered that the Brits occupied Singapore with their Forces for the years before, since WW2. My Mother often referred to the British Army wives she played cards with in Penang and Singapore because with both postings we caught the very end of their withdrawal from those posts.
Jean's group talked about growing up in South East Asia and Singapore was there in the discussion. I could relate to their stories and memories and smiled as i read, so i joined the group. Jean was very welcoming to this little colonial as were her other members and it was through them that i started to see the big picture of Australia, New Zealand and United Kingdom Armed Forces in Singapore and where we fit in to that picture.
A scene from our classroom flashed through my mind, it was the end of the first year at NZ Service School, Woodlands (Singapore). The teacher asked us to clean out the built in cupboards of the classroom. It was something to fill in the lst week of school and they were in a bad state. Cluttered with old books that seemed to be just thrown in there. Some of the books were old exercise books with ANZ Service School, some had Royal Naval School, Sembawang on the covers. Obviously left there over the years, i noted as the 12 year old i was, but had thought no more of it until reading through the britbrats messages.
The story was coming together and intrigued me.
Why were we there? What did our Fathers do? What service did they provide?
With those questions i built a story in my mind and queried on Jean's yahoo brit brat group. I also interrogated my Father any chance i found until i was thinking about those days of Singapore almost every spare moment of my day. I became obsessed, researching and seeking out anything i could find. I still didn't know why but that wasn't important. Something was pushing me on and i kept going looking for the end as it does still to this day.
One thing i learned was that our old school was taken over by the Singapore government and turned into a prison officer training school. What a disappointment it was to learn that. Oh, our poor school. Happy smiling kids played and learned in those school grounds and the layout was so unusual compared to those we went to back home in Australia and New Zealand. Open class rooms with glass folding walls on each side to allow the breeze to find us. Winding covered pathways we followed to find our next class. Old english bungalow style school halls, one for the primary school and a bigger version for the the high school. Known as the junior and senior halls.
It was depressing to think that people were learning how to perform restraint holds, strokes of the cane (i don't remember anyone getting the cane at that school) or maybe even the preparations and procedure of a hanging. Thankfully, it was recently reported to me by a brat who currently lives and works in Singapore that the old school is now being used by a Youth Adventure group or some such, but i'll talk about that at another time.
With some information at hand i knew it was time to create a place of our own, a place to gather Australian and New Zealand brats together.
If i was riding this great wave of nostalgia, maybe others would like to as well. Maybe others will one day sit at the computer and wonder about those days, access a search engine, type the keywords in hope to find something..anything..out there.
Only, when they did, magical words would appear when they hit the enter key.
ANZ Military Brats of Singapore.
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