Tuesday, June 19, 2018

Spearhead in Hong Kong - Stafford Gordon (1981) - Former Sham Shui Po Barracks, Kowloon

In episode 3 (inspiringly called Another Happy Day), one of the sqaddies' fathers comes over to visit his son and family (the dad is played by Milton Johns - a famous face to anyone growing up in the UK during the 70s and 80s) and his daughter in law (played by Pik Sen-lim) takes him for a dose of reality at a Vietnamese refugee camp in Kowloon. The only Kowloon refugee camp I know about was the former Sham Shui Po barracks and from the various images below, it looks as though this is where they do visit.

By 1981, the northern section of the old camp had already been redeveloped into the Lai Kok Estate but the southern section (now Sham Shui Po Park) was still intact and converted into a refugee holding camp. In the top image below you can see the pair walking past one of the old camp buildings (you can see a good example here on Gwulo.Com) as well as the temporary corrugated iron sheds used to house the refugees.


The last picture shows the old coastline through the trees and Stonecutter Island in the far distance. This was before the coast was reclaimed and stopped abruptly where the West Kowloon Corridor flyover now sits. The buildings on the right were part of the camp that was redeveloped into the Sham Pui Po public swimming pools at the NW end of the park. Since posting this originally, I found out that this camp was most likely part of the Jubilee Transit Centre that was open for a few years at the tail end of the 70's and early 80s. 

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