Memories of Cameron Highlands

By Dorothy (Webber) Weigall

As a child I lived on a rubber plantation called Jorak Estate, near Muar in Johore Bahru.

My father was an English ‘rubber planter’ and my mother an Australian secondary school teacher, who had been teaching in Penang.

I remember my first trip to Tanglin in Cameron Highlands. I was only 5 when I started at boarding school. Most of the children – boys and girls – came from Singapore, so at the beginning of term they caught the overnight train to Tapah Road in northern Malaya, a 500km journey.

My parents took me to the nearest railway station in the middle of the night to meet up with the train. There, one of the teachers greeted us and took me onto the train. When we reached Tapah Road Station in the morning, we travelled further on land by coach to Cameron Highlands, a further 60km on a very winding road. At times there were local indigenous men beside the road with their blow pipes.

My first school report at Tanglin Nursery School notes that I was rather shy at first, as I wasn’t used to playing with other children. When we were very young we would tell a teacher what to write in letters to our parents. This photo captures me, aged 6 waiting for my turn.

Soon we would progress to writing our own letters. Our uniforms at that time was dark brown with yellow shirts.

After two terms at the Nursery School, I was transferred to the ‘big school’. Being a bit older now, I enjoyed school and had made lots of friends. I remember wearing gold coloured Greek dresses for dancing class and walks in the jungle looking for ‘monkey cups’ (pitcher plants).

We finished school early in November 1941 because of a polio outbreak, and shortly after that the war started in Malaya with the fall of Singapore on 14 February 1942. My father was interned in Thailand but my mum with the three little girls returned to her family in Sydney. After the war, my parents returned to the rubber estate with my youngest sister Margaret Webber, who went to Tanglin as well for a short time. We have all since moved and lived in Australia since 1950.