Labour Weekend, 22-24 October 2005, Wellington

There won't be many New Zealanders that can boast that their school is now a prison warden training facility. But for the children of the New Zealand Defence Force, stationed in Singapore until the late 1980's, this is in fact true.

From the 1930's to 1989 a select few military personnel were posted there to improve military relations and maintain our Commonwealth ties to the United Kingdom.

They underwent regular training exercises with the Malayan and then Singaporean military, and as a bonus, from the mid 1950's, some of their families were able to go too, for a “Tour of Duty”, in this small South East Asian country.

As the Singaporean public school curriculum was different to that of New Zealand, a special “NZ Forces School” was set up in Sembawang, a northern suburb of Singapore, when the British schools closed down with the withdrawal of the British forces in the 1970s.

The school ran the NZ school programme and was staffed by NZ teachers. It ran from kindergarten thru to 7 th form, with a lot of the older students studying by correspondence.

The school itself was a selection of one-storey brick rooms joined together into rows, very much like the barracks, or stilt houses called “Black and Whites”.

The lunchroom was a cubbyhole where you could buy a toastie or pie, and a frozen flavoured milk or juice, though not a large selection no one seemed to mind.

Due to little outside contact with “the locals”, as the Singaporeans were known, firm friendships were made between these children, who spent their hot and humid days in class, and afternoons down by the NZ swimming complex called the Fernleaf, or wandering around The Strip drinking fresh fruit juices or looking through the rusty shacks that passed for shops.

With Poisonous snakes and spiders, and biting ants, many kids came face to face with things you would only see on a wildlife programme. I can tell you, those handmade roman sandals did nothing for stopping the red and black ants having a nibble as you wandered down to school in the mornings.

School camps were also a bit unusual as they took place in the dense Malaysian jungle, with Army soldiers as “guides”, teaching you how to build your own Hutchie, an off the ground “tent” that was your bed for the camp. How to orientate thru the jungle with a compass and a machete. And safety talks, on the dangers of the jungle, its ever-present animals and insects, and even how to remove leeches safely.