Sabah Most Wanted

Story behind Jesselton Hotel lobby pix: Aussie

Story behind Jesselton Hotel lobby pix: Aussie
Published on: Saturday, May 21, 2016
By Mary ChinIT was a nostalgic down memory lane trip for Kuching-born Marion Reeves, one of the 14 students of the All Saints’ 1965-1966 (HSC Class). The 68-year-old flew back from Australia for the recent 50th Anniversary Reunion gathering in Kota Kinabalu.
Marion and younger sister Elizabeth (now Prof Elizabeth Eckermann) are daughters of the late Bruce Reeves who served as Director of the Lands and Surveys Department, North Borneo and later Sabah from August 26, 1958 to November 19, 1966. (Prof Elizabeth is Personal Chair in Medical Sociology, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts and Education, Deakin University).
Reeves’ wife, Margaret, who lives in Adelaide, Australia, is still going strong at 90 and remembers vividly the early days in Sabah.
Marion, a trained nurse by profession, has fond memories of her father, saying he was very interested in the native land title.
“He was there during the Malaysian-Indonesian Confrontation and had to bring maps home,” she said without elaborating.
She takes pride in the fact that her parents’ photos taken with Lady Mountbatten now adorn the murals of the Jesselton Hotel lobby.
In fact, the collection is a personal gift to Wong Kah Ho from Margaret with the specific wish that the historic photos be hung in the Jesselton Hotel’s Mountbatten Lounge.
Lady Mountbatten was the wife of Lord Louis Mountbatten, a British statesman and naval officer. He was made the last Viceroy of British India and Later the first Governor-General of Independent India (which gained independence in 1947).
Then Superintendent-in-Chief of St John’s Ambulance Brigade, Lady Mountbatten arrived in Jesselton (now Kota Kinabalu) on February 18, 1960 for an engagement where she inspected the St John’s Parade and Demonstration on February 20, 1960. A day earlier (February 19, 1960), she had dinner at the Jesselton Hotel with Bruce Reeves and wife Margaret Reeves, and other local dignitaries.
Born in 1914, Reeves was educated at Nelson College and trained as a surveyor. In 1939, he was appointed to Sarawak during the Rajah Brooke Administration where he worked as a town planner and surveyor. From 1942 to 1946, he was on active service as a navigator in the Australian Navy.
After demobilisaton, he became the Superintendent of Lands and Surveys till 1949 when he spent a year as Settlement Officer. In 1950, he was posted to North Borneo (now Sabah), first as a surveyor and subsequently as Deputy Director of Lands and Surveys (1952). He was promoted to be Director in 1958 and served in this capacity until his retirement in 1966.
As a child, Marion used to catch mudfish in those bomb craters at Tanjung Aru left behind by the Second World War.
“After we had moved to Jesselton (now Kota Kinabalu) from Sarawak in the early 1950s, we lived in a kajang (attap) house on top of a hill. Later we moved to Tanjung Aru and lived in one of those houses built on the edge of the jungle (near the old KK Airport),” she recalled.
Marion went to boarding school in Australia from the time she was eight. “But by the time I was 15 or 16, I had been away from home for too long. So my parents decided to bring me and my sister back to Sabah. By then, Sabah had achieved independence from the British. That’s how I ended up at Sabah College for a year (1964) before joining All Saints’ School in 1965.”
Marion also related her father’s war experiences in Kuching – how he escaped from the invading Japanese.
“My Dad never talked about the war. But my paternal aunt knew about it. He wrote his sister a letter telling her about his experiences – how the Dayaks saved him and helped him.
“According to the contents of the letter, Dad was at a Christmas lunch when the Japanese suddenly came and entered the room. He walked slowly backwards, and fell out the window and ran into the nearby jungle.
“He walked for six weeks to Pontianak to get help from the Dayaks,” she shared.