Bukit Mandai II

History:

The writeup here is an abridged version of a blog page here.

This hill would have been the 9th tallest hill in Singapore if non of the Singapore's hills have had their head shaved off or quarried to non-existence. Bukit Mandai II originally had a height of about 305 feet (or about 93 m) and is situated about 1.2 km southwest of Bukit Mandai. The remnants of this hill is now loosely known as Gali Batu, which roughly means "Rock/Stone Digging" which suggests its quarrying origin. It sits behind the new Gali Batu bus terminal, not far from Woodlands Road.

On maps, it was an unnamed peak till the 1930s. The first mention that I can find of the name Bukit Mandai II came in the 1939 topographical map of Singapore [1].

Granite quarrying activities at Bukit Mandai II seems to have begun in 1925 [3]. This was the original 'Mandai Quarry' (Not to be confused with the later quarries associated with Bukit Mandai), and was owned by the Singapore Municipal Council and Singapore Harbour Board. The quarry was connected to the FMSR (Federated Malay States Railway) line and allows the quarried granite to be transported over to the Southern end of Singapore island for the construction needs around Singapore Harbour (Today's Harbourfront area). On the 1939 map above, is "Topham, Jones & Railton", who was the building contractor for the harbour construction (They were also the building contractor for the Causeway and many other civil and military works in Singapore then).

The 290 feet marked on the 1939 map in Fig. 1 and labelled "Bt. Mandai II" is not the highest point. A higher point is situated at a point about 100 meters south of the 290 point. The contour line is at 300 feet, and so I will estimate this highpoint to be 305 feet. Throughout all the maps that I have come across, this highpoint has remained unlabeled, so technically I am wrong here to name this high point 'Bt. Mandai II', but that is just some academic detail.

From the 1953 map (Below) [4], you can see the quarrying activity eating away the hill.

By about 1970, the 305 feet highpoint is gone, and the 290 feet (88 m) became the highpoint of Bt. Gombak II, which you see in the 1975 map (Below) [5]. Further quarrying ensures that that point itself eventually also disappeared about late 1980s to early 1990s. Nowadays, it is a rather scenic and secluded area (See Photo above).