Postcards from Seletar

As reported by Ven Sreenivasan in Business Times on June 4th, 2009

Redevelopment of the 300-hectare Seletar Aerospace Park is on schedule despite a slump in the global aviation industry. JTC Corp’s CEO Ow Foong Pheng said the developers of the aerospace park, led by JTC, would press on with infrastructural works to ensure that they are ready for customers’ operations as soon as the economy picks up. She was speaking at the groundbreaking of a new $6 million jet fuel depot on a 1.07 ha plot adjacent to the extended runway at the West Camp area ..

Weekend update from Suresh – original at the Seletar Airbase album

Demolition of an old Black and White bungalow on Brompton Road. The red dust, backlit by the setting sun, comes from the bricks that are being torn down

Thanks to notty-bug’s efforts, some images of the demolition, taken on 23rd April 2009. More can be seen at the original photostream

Some of you will remember photos from the 60s of the church and theatre. Pete, who used to live on the base, has helped us locate these structures.

The St Andrews Church I knew in 1960 was situated at the corner of Piccadilly and Oxford Rd. As Boy Scouts we used to march down Piccadilly past Mornington Crescent and turn left down Oxford Road. The Seletar Theatre was next door to it. I see from Google Earth that there looks like a parking lot there now.

Photos at previous post.

Inset to main story at Straits Times 30 March

RETIRED Major Yeo Kuan Joo, 72, who is coordinator and guide for the RAF Seletar Association members on tour here, has a special relationship with Seletar Airbase.
After losing his father in World War II, the middle child of three children, then aged about 11, met some RAF servicemen who became his unofficial guardians.

One of them is Dr John Bright Willis, now 80 and a retired mathematics lecturer from the University of Southampton. He was then 18 and serving in the RAF at a camp in Paya Lebar.

In a phone interview from the UK, he recalled, ‘Kuan Joo was a small boy wandering around the camp. He looked very intelligent and charming. He used to come and stay there from time to time at the camp cinema.’

The group of four to five servicemen, including Dr Willis, thought it was a pity if the boy did not receive an education and pooled together money to send him to a boarding school here.

When Major (Ret) Yeo was schooling, he would visit his guardians at Seletar Airbase where they were later posted, during his weekends and school holidays.

He became known as the only Chinese boy in Seletar, wandering around the camp and going to the hangar where the radar fitters worked.

‘He made friends very easily,’ added Dr Willis.

After Dr Willis returned to the UK, Major (Ret) Yeo went on to stay with RAF serviceman Mr Stan Peirce and his wife, Molly, now both deceased, on their married quarters in Seletar, during his school holidays.

The servicemen continued to pay for his education after their return to UK.

Major (Ret) Yeo was involved in trade but eventually joined the Singapore Armed Forces in the 1960s, rising through the ranks and was posted to Seletar to be Camp Commandant in the early 1980s.

‘I never asked for my posting but providence put me as camp commandant of Seletar,’ he said, saying that his life has come full circle. He was also president of the RAF Seletar Association from 2001 to 2006.

One of the organisers of the ‘pilgrimages’ back to Seletar, he hopes that the main gate of Seletar will be retained and the guardhouse will be converted to a small museum.