1952 Trip to Tutong for a Friendly Football (Soccer) Match
By Chow Kit Ying
Sometimes it is nice to recollect some of those events that we encountered which gave us the experience to all sorts of conditions, and yet we can remember them quite clearly. The one that happened 60+ years ago was the friendly soccer match between St. John School and a Tutong team.
As in those days there were no inland road between Seria and Tutong and one had to use the beach after Sungai Talie all the way to Danau but required to cross the Sungai Lumut by wooden bridge. At Danau one must use a ferry to cross two rivers. The ferry consisted of a barge or ‘tongan’ and a tugboat or rather a small launch. Two rows of planks placed on top of the deck of the barge, so that cars or Lorries can drive over them, then a tugboat or rather a small launch tied to the side of the barge as the prime mover. It was quite scary to watch cars and Lorries driven in and out of the ferry especially when the trucks or lorries were carrying heavy loads. The ferry could only accommodate one lorry or two cars at any one time, however some times they managed to squeeze in a small car behind a lorry if it was not too heavily loaded. The ferry sailed down the river Talisai toward the river mouth where the Talisai and Tutong rivers met. The ferry then continued to cross the river Tutong and reached its destination. All in all it took about 45 minutes to make the trip, after that it would be sand road again until reaching Tutong Town.
In Tutong a few of the players that had friends or relatives who invited them to their homes for the night including Fr. Walsh and the rest of us were put up at a rubber processing plant for the night. The remainder of the team piled into a small room that was furnished with a couple of wooden beds and some mattresses above an office. Without mosquito nets we were unable to sleep until the early hours. Then just when we managed to have some shut eyes, we were rudely awoken by thick and chocking smoke that filled the entire building including the tiny room we slept in. All of us rushed down stairs to find that one of the workers came early to start a fire to boil the rubber. The type of firewood he used generated an unbelievable amount of smoke that chased us from the building.
The result of the friendly soccer match was as predicted; we lost, but gave them a good fight. After lunch we return home by the same route, just reversing the direction. Although the ride was so bumpy we still could get some sleep because we were so tired after the episode at the rubber plant.
Memories of The Way We Were 