RIFLE RANGE BOY: Another piece of Malayan history

Carey Island - Historical Island (Tamil; 2022)
வரலாற்று சிறப்பு மிக்க கெரித்தீவு

Author: M Govindasamy

In 1988, when I was a doe-eyed newbie starting work in Klang, I was assigned to many in-patients who hailed from a peculiar place called Carey Island. I swear I knew the small islands around Malaysia, but I had never encountered any Carey Island. In Penang, where I grew up, my contemporaries and I tried to excite ourselves by quizzing each other and trying to locate islands on the atlas. Our interests were piqued by the people manning the now-defunct ferry services between Penang Island and Butterworth. The ferries were named after islands around Malaysia - Langkawi, Tioman, Pangkor, Redang, etcetera. The name that excited us most was Pulau Babi Besar. Sadly, Pulau Babi Besar is now renamed Pulau Indah, as the previous name hurt the sentiments of small hogs and those who perceived the animal as unclean.

Carey Island is no island at all. It is part of the state of Selangor, which is dissected by a river on one side and maybe an irrigation canal on the other side to make it an island of sorts.

I remember many patients who were brought in from Carey Island were plantation workers with a multitude of social problems, including domestic issues and suicide attempts.

The history of Carey Island is strongly interlinked with the history of British rule in Malaya. Even before the British exploited the group of land over the western part of Selangor, the island was already occupied by indigenous people and a smattering of Malays, Chinese and Indians even before the land was 'developed' by the colonial masters.

Carey Island is technically not an island.

The Carey family was related to one of King Henry XIII's wives. Edward Valentine Carey's family acquired a massive piece of land in Ceylon to develop a thriving coffee plantation named Amherst. Through appeasement deals with the British, Edward Carey was gifted with a parcel of land in Gombak and, later, in 1899, a piece of land on the western coast of Selangor. The Gombak plantation land was christened New Amherst Estate Gombak.

Carey Island, a piece of land that came to be called later, was exploited to cultivate coffee, coconut and rubber. Together with the development of this land came labourers from South India and other immigrants to complement the bustling economy.

This book is a trip down memory lane of some of the landmarks on the island via photographs to remind the readers of how this island contributed to the national economy and became part of the narrative of the three generations of settlers who call this place home.

A few exciting snippets here. Unlike the common perceptions that crows, who are currently the unceremonious natives of Klang, came as stowaways on a merchant ship, they were actually actively sourced from Ceylon. Crows were brought in to gobble up worms that were a menace to their plantation.

Malaria was a severe problem for the occupants of Carey Island. Many died due to the disease. Only after Ronald Ross discovered the cause and ways to keep this menace under control did the State Health director institute measures to rein the ailment under control. The director went on to be knighted later on.

There used to be an active ferry service until a modern bridge was built to make the service redundant by the 1980s.