8
A COMPLETELY NEW PORT
emblem, writ in steel, of what PADS was all about - the concerting of marine and aviation developments.
At the same time as the airport/harbour bridge is taking shape, another massive structure will be emerging to view in waters well to the south. A breakwater to protect the container terminals will extend from Cheung Chau to a point off Lamma Island. Simultaneously, dredging operations between the end of the breakwater and the west coast of Lamma will be creating a new shipping channel; for container ships it will become the main road of the future into and out of Hong Kong harbour.
A shift of focus indeed. Lantau, the territory's largest insular component, will no longer fit the category of an 'outlying island'. Its extensive country park in the south will be preserved, as green and as inviting as now for recreational activities. But a large portion of the northern coast will be developed into industrial and residential areas, including two new townships to house airport and other workers.
Likewise, the north-eastern corner of Lantau, the Tsing Chau Tsai peninsula, will be enlarged and reshaped into one of the busiest industrial complexes of Hong Kong. Around the new terminals, as they come on stream, port back-up and industrial areas will steadily grow - supportive tissue, if you like, for the new muscle in their midst.
These changes, that will transform the appearance of a large part of the territory (and keep its mappers hard at work for the next two or three decades), can be seen primarily as a response to the challenge of dramatically increasing demand. But, to round out the Grand Design and to explore its implications further, it is worth making a brief excursion back in time - to pre-PADS days.
The Thrust to the West
In the early 1970s the then Director of Public Works, the late James Robson, would from time to time brief distinguished visitors to Hong Kong on the pattern of the territory's development - past, present and prospective.
Typical of these briefings was a session which took place in mid-1973. It did not last long, perhaps a little over half an hour, but it was a memorable presentation, in tone at once conversational and forceful: a digest of history and changing topography, all of it related to the harbour.
The speaker used three visual aids in succession. The first was Victoria Harbour itself, most of it then visible from his 20th floor office. Leading his visitor to the window, he pointed out that early governors of Hong Kong, enjoying a similar view from Government House, could gauge the state of the economy by counting the vessels in the harbour. (Nowadays they can't; towering bank buildings block the view, and the container ships and bulk carriers would anyway be out of sight.)
A lot of ground was covered fast. The subjects ranged from the location in 1841 of the house of the harbour-master (the first public administrator to be appointed) to the advent of deep-draught steamships, which enhanced the utility and value of what was the only first-class deepwater harbour between Singapore and Shanghai. The sketch moved forward into the 20th century to take in, among other things, the impact of the worldwide slump in the 1930s and successive aviation developments which led to the construction, in the 1950s, of Kai Tak's runway-in-the-sea.
Robson then turned to a map of the territory covering most of one wall and pointed to the area north-west of Kowloon which is today's Tsuen Wan/Kwai Chung/Tsing Yi