Saturday 7 November 2009

More photos of Sandycroft Leave Centre, Penang 1960s


I was asked to upload a few more photos from Sandycroft Leave Centre in the 1960s, so here they are! If you attend Dalat School which stands on the same spot, you may be able to recognise some of the areas in the photos. The first one was taken by my brother with our Kodak 127 camera looking down towards the children's swimming pool. I believe the cinema was off to the right. Just past the pool was the area where the beach was and we took boat trips from a jetty on the right.
The second photo is of the bar area. You can tell that all the Forces personnel here have just come straight from the beach! Plenty of Tiger Beer on tap and a juke box on the right. The bar faced towards the sea and I think that the cafe and restaurant were joined to it. Look at that mural of the beach at Tanjong Bungah. I remember walking past the bar on the way to the arcade, I think that it had large windows looking out towards the sea.
The third photo shows the children's pool area again. We used to always play in there, it wasn't very deep. Sometimes, we would even take the lilo in! The fourth photo shows the area on the right that, I think, was the arcade. Lots of 'shoot-em-up' games and slot machines. If you were lucky to win, you had to find the arcade owner, who was Chinese, and show him the machine to verify this before he would pay out the money.
 The problem was, and he knew this, that someone always wanted to play the machine in the meantime! The tables,chairs and umbrellas are where people would have their breakfast and lunch from the nearby cafe.
The final photo was taken by my parents friend, George Holden. His three children can be seen playing on the swings on the right. Incidentally, if you click on any of the photos in the blog, you can see them much larger. I hope to post more photos of the Leave Centre and Penang shortly.

1 comment:

  1. Hello!
    Was impressed to see the pics from sandycroft. It awoke some old memories. My father used to work as a chief contractor of the laundry for sandycroft. My father was of chinese origin. He used to work there during the 50-60:s. I think maybe your father may have meet him sometime. His name was Leng Pew Kee. Wishing we could talk about old memories from Sandycroft.

    With best of regards Joe Leng.

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