Feature image credit: The Borneo Post
There is a place in Kuching called Bukit Stapok. You might think that the area is named after a hill, but if you go to the area today, you will find no such hill.
Yet various sources have referenced the hill, spelled differently in different places. Stapok, Si-tapok, Darod Stapok, Si-tapuk, Bukit Si-tapuk, Mount Stapok. However, there is no recent photo of this mysterious hill. According to sources, Bukit Stapok is (was) 434 feet, approximately the height of the Great Pyramid in Giza. If that is so, there is no way we would miss it.
In old drawings by Hiram Williams in 1847 and Thomas Picken years later, one can observe two curious little hills to the east of Kuching. Present day, there is only one hill there — Bukit Siol. Based on the location and landmarks, we can deduce that the second hill in the drawing is in the Stapok area.
That is not the only one. In a photo of Sarawak General Hospital in 1925, far in the background stands a hill… Bukit Stapok.
So what’s up with that? Where is Bukit Stapok? Was it simply a figment of our collective imagination, or did the hill disappear into thin air?
Here is where it gets interesting. If we were to trace the spot where the hill is located in all the pictures we have, helped by old maps of the area, that spot is now… a lake?
The truth
A 2013 article in The Borneo Post referencing the mining of Serambu read: The future of Serambu is in the hands of the authorities. Let’s start taking as many photographs of the beautiful mountain as possible from all sides and different angles before it is flattened, as was the fate of Bukit Stapok and Gunung Paku.
Mining.
What happened was that Bukit Stapok became a quarry site first. There is even an old Bidayuh poem that goes:
“There is now a quarry where once stood Stapok Hill
Men work hard to blast and mine and haul limestones away
I don’t nurse a quarrel nor hold a man ill will
I prefer to speak my mind and mean just what I say.“
The stones from Bukit Stapok were thought to be high quality and were used for road and building construction. Now, decades of mining activities later, we have no more hill and no more quarry. In its stead is a lake, a testament to the harm of irresponsible mining.
Mining is horrible for our environment, but at the same time, we need mining for progress. Balancing the two can be tricky. Nonetheless, we had better be careful before all our mountains and forests become another Bukit Stapok.
Information in this article is based on the following video by the Faculty of Built Environment, University Malaysia Sarawak:
Chow Ping Lee is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav.
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