Looking at an old press release online (available via this link) there is an old mention of the Kowloon "Fire Brigade Dock" being used as the stand-in for the Hankow Bund. I honestly had no idea of where this might be but looked at an old 1965 map for references. The map wasn't that specific but did show all the Govt piers and it wasn't long before the penny dropped and I realised it was the dock that used to be in front of what is now the main Tsim Sha Tsui Fire Station on Canton Road.
The clincher was this BTS photo over on Don Whistance's blog (update: blog link now dead but he was the guy who contacted me about all this stuff a few months back). Don has mistakenly mixed it in with the Tamsui pictures (one of several errors) but it quite clearly shows a modern building at the back which turns out to be a school... two schools in fact: the Lai Chack Middle School and the Canton Road Govt Primary School.
It looks as though the old Govt site had quite a few old colonial style colonnaded buildings on it which have since been knocked down and replaced by not only the current version of the fire station but also the adjoining China Hong Kong City building.
Anyway, comparing the BTS photo and current maps, it looks as though the building with "Hankow Godown" written on it was about where Tower 3 of the China Ferry terminal now stands. There's still some semblance of a pier here at the moment but I suspect it is off limits until the High Speed Rail terminal has been completed. In the meantime, here are the film grabs for that location.
This bit of extra identification has also now allowed me to place some other shots from Lord Jim that I was scratching my head about at the time. So a new Lord Jim post will be up in a few days as well.
4 comments:
Hi Phil,
I guess Whistance's blog could only be viewed in those crazy 23:9 monitors withing scrolling left and right, or for a multiple monitors setup.
It is extremely difficult to read.
T
Very true, Thomas. He has some great information on there but the site is a real mess. I have also noticed a fair few errors regarding some of the images.
Hi Phil,
Guess what, I invoked 'View Source' and found the page was created by FrontPage version 5. Sort of astonishing using such antique software.
If we use Internet Explorer, maybe an older version, and set it up to view at 50%, it is sort of readable on a full screen on my Thinkpad. But the blog tends to put everything in the middle.... sort of out of fashion these days.
Thanks & Best Regards,
T
I suspect he has been doing this stuff for that amount of time. Don't worry, I think even Blogger is considered to be a bit of old hat these days...but at least the scteen format is slightly easier on the eye.
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