May_1965 — Page 38

CIVIL ENGINEERING & Public worKS

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Ferry installed and operated by engineers for army and civil use

Road-making in Sabah interior

Australian Engineers Forge Jungle Link

HE once inaccessible interior of Sabah is being penetrated by a team of Australian Army Engineers which in recent months has averaged a mile a week of newly constructed jungle road.

Engineers of the 7th Field Squadron Group, RAE, arrived in Jesselton, capital of Sabah, in June last year as part of the Australian aid programme to Malaysia. They spent six months in Borneo, during which time they carved 28 miles of road from Keningau, 100 miles from Jesselton, through to Sook, inside the Murut tribe country.

This stretch of road was completed last December with the building of a Bailey bridge over the Sook River.

At about the same time a detach- ment of the squadron group com- pleted the clearing of a 2,400 ft. airstrip on the banks of the Kinaba- tangan River at Kuamut, 200 miles from Sandakan.

The 7th Squadron finished its six- month tour of duty just before Christmas and has been replaced by the No. 1 Field Squadron Group, RAE, which is taking the road from Sook, through towards Pensiangan, a heavily fortified village 14 miles from the Indonesian border.

River Transport

First Australian troops in Borneo since World War II, the 7th Field Squadron was commanded by Major Frank Cross. It numbered about 200 and included a detachment of the 1st Division Engineer Workshop, Royal Australian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, which was responsible for communications and maintenance of the construction equipment.

This equipment, landed with the group, included heavy and light bulldozers, a fleet of dump trucks, front end loaders, graders, scraper units, excavators and heavy rollers.

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For the Kuamut airstrip the only route for the dozers and earthmovers was the Kinabatangan River which winds through jungle from Sandakan 200 miles away. The machines were shipped aboard scows which had to negotiate rapids and half-submerged logs. The journey from Sandakan to Kuamut took up to three weeks.

An aerial survey by helicopter pre- ceeds the road cutting team, which has now reached the mountainous region surrounding Sook, having sur- mounted the most hazardous section of the project so far. This was in March, when the team emerged from the Sook Plains after a three-week battle over 1 miles through monsoon rains, which turned the plains into a sea of mud.

No 1 Squadron will complete its tour of duty in June, by which time the Keningau-Pensiangan jungle road should be complete. The road will be- come a major link in the Sabah Gov- ernment's communications program- me, designed to open up the country.

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Excavator at work on the Sook Road

Soil dressing being quarried from a cleared hill

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Grader and weighted roller on Kuamut Airstrip

Far East Architect & Builder May, 1965