Heritage Snippets of Sarawak
By Anita G MacGillivray
ON February 19, 2023, we celebrated the first anniversary of the launch of the Beccari Rattan Valley Trail at Kubah National Park.
It was the perfect opportunity to inform and remind everyone of the rich history of the area around Kuching and even more so to highlight the amazing biodiversity of the Matang area.
The local people have always known of the amazing forest in the Mating area but it was Italian botanist Odoardo Beccari who brought this area to the attention of the rest of the world. Alfred Russel Wallace had already been in Sarawak in 1855–1862 exploring, collecting the flora and fauna of Sarawak and Borneo and the Malay Archipelago and writing “The Sarawak Law”—but Sarawak/Borneo was still quite unexplored.
Beccari said: “…nowhere did I meet with primeval forests so rich varied and so peculiar in their flora as in the vicinity of Kuching.” (Wanderings in the Great Forests of Borneo Odoardo Beccari, 1904 p.5)
Odoardo Beccari (1843-1920), from Florence, Italy, was a remarkable figure. He and another Italian botanist Giacomo Doria, arrived in Sarawak on June 19, 1865, as a 23 year-old with a passion for scientific discovery. To prepare for this voyage, Beccari stayed in London from February–April 1865 to study the natural history collections there, in particular at the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew. There, he also met Charles Darwin, William and Joseph Hooker, as well as James Brooke, the first Rajah of Sarawak.
In Sarawak, he worked mostly at his field house called “Vallombrosa” at Matang in the forest some 80km from Kuching, in today’s Kubah National Park.
Beccari collected and documented over 4,000 specimens in Borneo, chiefly plants but also insects, birds and animals, including orang utan specimens. He also visited many other parts of Sarawak including the Batang Lupar, Tubau, Belaga, Kanowit, Simanggang and also Kapuas in Kalimantan, Labuan and Brunei.
Thirty years after he first visited Sarawak, in May 1897, he was visited in Florence by Margaret Brooke, the Ranee of Sarawak, who inspired him to write a book about his explorations in Borneo.
Beccari described his voyage to Borneo in a book first published in Italian titled “Nella foreste di Borneo”. The English edition titled “Wanderings in the great forest of Borneo—travels and research of a naturalist in Sarawak” was published in 1902.
During his time at Matang, in 1866, Beccari accompanied Rajah Charles Brooke and a coffee planter Mr Martin in search of a suitable site to establish a coffee plantation. They chose Matang because of the hilly terrain. Between 1866 and 1877, a coffee plantation was established but did not thrive—for various reasons.
In 1881 there was a revival of the Matang plantation with cardamon, cocoa, chincona and tea being planted. Again, for various reasons, this did not thrive and the plantation was abandoned in 1912.
One of the biggest consequences of this Matang plantation project was the arrival Tamil South Indian Hindus who came as workers to run the Rajah’s Matang tea and coffee estate. When the tea plantation closed, the Indian labourers were given the choice to either return home or accept other jobs.
Most choose to return home. Only around 40 families stayed. The majority of the Indian community in Sarawak are the descendants of these families who stayed. In 1968, discovery was made of a Hindu Sri Maha Mariammam temple built most probably around 1890 at the centre of the Rajah’s tea plantation. This has now been restored and renovated and well worth a visit.
The Natural History Museum of Florence University had plans to have a Travelling Exhibition in Italy to mark the centenary of Beccari’s death and it was felt that there should be a celebration of Beccari’s work here in Kuching, Sarawak.
And so the “Beccari Centenary Celebration 2020-2021—Revealing Sarawak’s Biodiverity” came into being. This was organised through Friends of Sarawak Museum—an NGO that promotes an appreciation of Sarawak’s history and heritage, and funded by the Sarawak Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture.
The Celebration was divided into 4 main events:
- Beccari Discovery Trail—interpretive trail at Matang to the site of Vallombrosa, Beccari’s field house;
- Beccari’s Rotan Valley Trail, an interpretive trail at Kubah National Park;
- Beccari Centenary: Revealing Sarawak’s Biodiversity—a pop-up/online exhibition; and
The Beccari Talk Series.
The Beccari Discovery Trail was completed and launched on July 25, 2020. This trail followed the trail laid by Beccari when he travelled up Mount Matang to establish his hut “Vallombrosa” so that he could remain there collecting and investigating the local flora.
From the 1970’s, this became a rocky track that led up to the remains of Vallombrosa and to the Hindu Sri Maha Mariammam temple. This track is now a tar-sealed road only negotiable by 4-wheel-drive and is not open to public vehicles. But the track is The Beccari Discovery Trail with Interpretive sign boards dotted along the trail giving you a history and information on the amazing flora and fauna of the Area. It leads up to the Hindu Sri Maha Mariammam temple and some great views of the Matang and Kubah forest areas.
The Beccari Rotan Valley Trail was completed and launched on February 19, 2022.
During Beccari’s stay in Matang, he found an area in present day Kubah National Park which had a magnificent collection of different palms. He called it “The Valley of Rotang”.
The new trail that has been developed has tried to incorporate parts of the “Rotang Valley” that Beccari found using information and maps from his book. This is an interpretive trail with signboards. More information can be found at https://sarawakforestry.com/layout2/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Beccari-Rattan-Valley-Trail-@-Matang.pdf and from https://sarawakforestry.com.
The exhibition became a Virtual Exhibition titled “Plant People: Unearthing Sarawak’s Botany” and was launched on October 2, 2021. It is accessible through the FoSM website at www.friendsofsarawakmuseum.org
Meanwhile, the subject matter for The Beccari Talk Series was split broadly into 3 categories—History, Botany and Biodiversity—based around Beccari and Sarawak.
The topics and the speakers of the Beccari Talk series are:
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- ‘Palm diversity in Malaysia with special emphasis in Sarawak’ by Dato Dr Saw Leng Guan
- ‘Animal life of the Matang Massif—an overview including historical observations by Beccari’ by Chien C Lee
- ‘Beccari, Borneo and Beyond—Beccari’s life and works’ by Michele Rodda, PhD
- ‘Beyond Beccari—Botany under the Brooks, 1880 to 1940’ by Jennifer Morris PhD
- ‘Nature for tourism in Sarawak’ by Robert Basiuk
- ‘The Brooks and the Botanic Garden networks—the establishment of the Mount Matang coffee estate’ by Jutta Kelling, PhD candidate
- ‘Beccari—a naturalist in Borneo and his modern legacy’ by Daniele Cicuzza, PhD
- ‘Exploring Sarawak’s biodiversity and its conservation’ by Rambli Ahmad
The videos of the talks are available on FoSM’s Facebook Page – ‘Friends of Sarawak Museum’.
We live in an area of great biodiversity and an amazing history. We were not a little backwater—ulu—place. We were known to different scientific communities in the world and had visitors and explorers from these communities visiting us and conducting research. And still its ‘Sarawak More to Discover’—do go and discover on the Beccari Trails!
Anita Majumder–MacGillivray is a keen student, collector and sharer of culture, heritage and all things that help define us. She is a founding member of Friends of Sarawak Musuem.
“Heritage Snippets of Sarawak” is a fortnightly column.
