Life on the Camp
Who lives here:
Where are you from originally, and when did you come to Singapore?
I’m from Papakura, New Zealand, and Kieran is from Teddington in London. I moved here from New Zealand in 1996. Working as an Immigration Officer at the New Zealand High Commission kept me very busy with frequent travels to Sri Lanka and Jordan, and I quickly found a wonderful group of friends, both within the New Zealand community and outside.
You met Kieran here; what brought him to Singapore?
We met through mutual friends. In 1996, the marketing agency Kieran was working for in London won a global account that needed him to be based in Singapore so he jumped at the chance.
Continuing our semi-regular feature on expat families who have called Singapore home for many years, we meet a household of Seletar stalwarts. CHRISTINA VYE tells us about their home, their neighbours and their lifestyle in the northeast of the island.
How long have you been living at Seletar, and why did you choose a black-and-white as your home?
When our eldest daughter Charlie was born, we were living in Bedok in a four-storey townhouse with a tiny outdoor space. In 2005, with Charlie still a toddler, we visited friends at Seletar Camp. We immediately fell in love with the place – the vibrant, welcoming community, the diverse nature, the sheer size of the open space, and the quiet and quaint country roads for cycling, running and exploring; and, of course, the bungalows with proper gardens and no staircases.
We added our name on the bungalow waiting list and Premas rang us after a couple of days with details of a house ready for rent. We signed up on the spot – even before we saw the interior. We were so excited and didn’t want to lose the opportunity of a lifetime.
Was it a good decision?
We’re still in that same house 16 years later! The black-and-white bungalows are so flexible to modern living and a growing family. Over the years, it has been adapted to our family’s needs – most recently, of
course, turning the spare bedroom (which was originally the dining room) into a comfortable office for the two of us to work from home, as well as a music studio for the girls. The experiences the black-and-whites have lived through and their solid construction give us a sense of responsibility for caring for an important part of Singapore’s history. The Camp is a calm oasis – the bustling city life is beyond the gates.
Our neighbours have become best friends – the kids have all grown up together and shared a lifetime of experiences together at the Camp. Even as toddlers, they yo-yo’d from house to house in complete safety, and Friday nights became the weekly “Seletar Playgroups” when each family took it in turn to host end-of-week gatherings. The Sunset Bar, which is owned by Jerry (of “Jerry’s BBQ & Grill” fame), was a great spot for Saturday drinks – and the hottest chicken wings on the island! The kids’ playground was the airport runway, being careful not to get in the way of any taxiing small planes!
Any negative experiences?
We did have a scare six years ago when tenancy policies changed, forcing each black-and-white home to be put back on the market for open bidding after ten years of continual lease – even though the house was still a home and had been cared for and maintained by the tenant. Unfortunately, ours was one of very few that this policy impacted before it was quickly changed back, and we had to do a blind bid to stay in the house that had become so much more than a home. Fortunately, our bid was the highest (only just!) of six families who wanted to live in this wonderful spot. The policy didn’t please anyone in the end, and it was revoked; we were one of only a few families who went through the experience.
It was also incredibly painful living here in 2008 when we watched the bulldozers demolishing acres of beautiful 1920s and 1930s buildings to make way for Seletar Aerospace and the extended airport; a number of our friends had to leave their homes – fortunately, all of them have returned.
Do you still love it?
The community is still here – the kids are now teenagers who hang out at the various houses for “darts and pool evenings”, though we parents still gather for the Friday night “playgroups”!
The nature is still here, too, though the new fast roads surrounding the Camp means we see fewer land animals such as wild boars, though the new Hampstead Gardens has become a birders’ paradise.
We wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in Singapore; it’s a magical place to live – the history, the well-designed tropical houses and the space (which we were extremely grateful for during lockdown). There are very few places in Singapore to live where you see no other buildings from your terrace.