More views of Sandakan

These two postcards are really nice and gives a flavour of life and what it looked like in the early 1900s.

This is a greenish tinted postcard sent in the middle of 1914. It showed a popular view of Sandakan from a vantage point on Bukit Merah, probably quite near to where the present observation platform is today. It is not far from the Agnes Keith House.
The publisher of the card is unknown. The buildings nowadays are completely different. The clock tower can be seen near the middle of the photo and next to it, the government buildings. Does anybody recognise the ship in the harbour?  I have been reliably informed that the jetty on the right could be Gueritz's folly or the coaling pier. E P Gueritz was one of the governors of North Borneo.
I have seen a rare photograph of this similar scene taken by Osa and Martin Johnson while on their safari to North Borneo in 1920. The area of the coaling pier is no more and is now reclaimed land.

Both these cards were sent on the same day from Sandakan by the same person to different addresses. They have the same format at the back and so came from the same source, probably GB. These two scene are also similarly replicated early in the Funk series of postcards. It is not certain which ones came first as they have similar dates of usage.

More postcards

I thought I will continue with some more of the postcards that I displayed at our recent Sarawak Society AGM.

I found this postcard scene very idyllic and interesting. It is not certain where in Sandakan it was taken. It was suggested that it might have been near to Singapore Rd by the old temple. But the background is more hilly there as the road runs through a little valley. A rural area like Bukit Merah or the track to Kebun China before North/Labuk Road came into being would have been a more likely candidate.

To complicate matters it was sent from Lahad Datu on 5 NOV 1911 and transited at Sandakan on 9 NOV 1911. The message was all in Dutch. Perhaps I should have asked my Dutch friend for a translation. It was presumably from someone working at or was affiliated to the large tobacco farm in the area.The message was written earlier in September. We also have the arrival marking for Holland.

This is a relatively modern postcard with an unremarkable scene of Mt Kinabalu. I was puzzled by the datestamp with the "year in a box" but it was helpfully suggested to me at the AGM that it was likely to be due to a loosed year slug. This was one of the very first machine cancels used in Sabah.
Actually, what interested me more was the rectangular air mail cachet with a picture of a modern looking jet plane. I think it is probably quite uncommon not having seen another example before.