Untitled Document

EARTH

New !

Love Affair at Sembawang Beach

Sembawang Beach is the only accessible beach left along the northern shores of Singapore today. It is a sandy retreat that folks up here at Yishun, Sembawang and Woodlands would regularly go to play and to relax over the weekends.

My own love affair with Sembawang Beach started in 1975 when my family moved into the nearby township of Marsiling. I was 15 then, and a quick-silver was I in making friends too. It did not take me and my new neighbourhood friends long to uncover Sembawang Beach and make it our haunt for catching Flower and Mud Crabs.

Since then, much has changed. Kampung Wak Hassan and the mangrove along Jalan Inggu have altogether disappeared. The once-derelict Beaulieu House is now

a respectable seafood restaurant, and many new amenities have been put in place at the beach front. Everything is much cleaner now, of course.

I have changed too. I became a father in 1993 and Sembawang Beach became the favourite playground for the oneness of my son and I.

There is, however, one aspect about Sembawang Beach that has remained unchange all these years. It is the huge crowd that faithfully congregates here comes every weekend. The beach buzzes with activities of families and friends having fun with the winds in their hairs and the waves at their feet. There cannot be a finer testament than this to the endearing love affair between a community and the beach behind her own backyard. This is where hearts are young and free -- then and now.

But how will the tide turns for Sembawang Beach in the near future? It stirs me to ask: Could there be a more heartless eventuality than a reclamation of the seas to rob this
gift of life from the bosom of the northern folks of Singapore? It remains to be seen.

'If you would swim on the bosom of the ocean of Truth, you must reduce yourself to a zero.' -- Mahatma Gandhi

Below are some pictures taken today (7 May 2006):