This photo was taken on our trip up to Penang in 1966. I've mentioned before that we travelled all the way up to Penang from Johore in a tiny Toyota.
There were lots of rubber plantations in Malaya but this one made us laugh because it was called the 'Gooi Rubber Company' which looked a lot like 'Gooey Rubber' to us and that's what we called it ever after. I think this photo was taken by my mum and we must have stopped on the way to take it. Although we were warned of bandits and wild animals such as tigers, I don't think we ever saw any, just the few working elephants that crossed our path further into the journey. I don't even remember seeing any monkeys on the long journey although there were plenty of dead snakes on the road.
The rubber trees used to have grooves cut in them which led down to a metal cup or half a coconut to collect the rubber. This seemed a long drawn out process even back then and I'm still not sure how they collected it all and put it to use. Some of it will have turned up in our tyres and the many flip-flops we wore over the years. There was a rubber factory near our home in Jalan Wijaya and I recall the smell. Alan remembers opening one of the bins and finding a sheet of rubber with all the shapes for flip-flops pressed out of it. It all burnt down one night while we slept. There must have been a huge black cloud and an awful smell but we missed it all because we were fast asleep.
I wonder if the Gooi Rubber Company is still in business?
Some years ago I read a report in the papers about a Malaysian businessman who spent a tidy some to tender for the car license no. 6001. At that time, cars registered in the state of Malacca (now spelt Melaka) began with the letters MR. The report carried a photo of the car with the number plate MR6001. The businessman's name was Gooi. We are probably referring to the same person.
ReplyDeleteMr Gooi was often seen driving a Honda Jazz bearing the registration number MR6001 in the northern state of Kedah
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