Borge Bek-Nielsen’s first boss, Axel Lindquist, was accustomed to fly a British built two-seater Auster J2 high wing monoplane from United Plantations’ Ulu Bernam Estate. He would fly to meetings at the company’s headquarters at Jendarata and for weekends to Penang. Each venue was less than half an hour’s flying time from Ulu Bernam. Ipoh, the capital of Perak, was an hour away, and the bright lights of Kuala Lumpur might be up to two hours away during the rainy season.
When Bek had completed his palm oil mill training at Ulu Bernam and after he had sat for the Steam Certificate, Axel taught him how to fly. Five years later, he bought his first aircraft, a fully aerobatic Bellanca Citabria. It was the one-time property of a member of the Penang Aero Club – a serving US Colonel in the Vietnam War who, on being offered promotion to command a US Pacific Island airbase, offered his hobby-horse for sale.
Within five years of Bek starting work at Ulu Bernam, a plantation in Kedah signalled its need for a palm oil mill. By any form of late 1950s reckoning, Gebr. Stork’s oil palm mill monopoly from Amsterdam was a questionable match for ‘Made at Ulu Bernam’ know-how; even Stork’s very mill buildings were supplied from Holland. Then Malaya had no domestic commercial alternatives to Gebr. Storks’ time-proven, reliable palm oil mills.
Bek hired a part-time draughtsman to work for him on mill design at Ulu Bernam. His motto, ‘Made at Ulu Bernam’, moved up a notch to ‘Designed and made at Ulu Bernam’. He found a civil engineering contractor, Mr Lee Fook Sum of Capital Engineering, Klang. He was willing to prefabricate all-steel buildings in his yard, as well as carry out the on-site civil engineering work required for building and machinery foundations. Together, they found workmen who were trained in the shipping industry, and railway and workshop machinery installation.
Bek undertook to design the larger items of palm oil mill mechanical inventory items, including the water purification system, fresh fruit bunch ramp, horizontal sterilisers, elevators, conveyors, pressing station, palm oil separation, water and oil tanks and the nut plant. He continued to make use of Stork fruit digesters, Stork automatic oil recovery presses, Stork palm oil sludge centrifuges (some of which are still in use 60 years later!) and Stork nutcrackers.
The contracts were duly signed and Bek’s first mill construction was set in motion. He made it a point to pay an afternoon visit to the Kedah plantation site once or twice a week to monitor the physical progress. Every now and again, a mini-crisis would loom; fittings supplied didn’t match their foundations or a support girder went missing somewhere along the supply line.
Shocking end
Came the day – actually one fine afternoon – when Bek requested a test run at the new mill. He was watching some adjustments being carried out when the patter of rain reminded him of his schedule. He set off from the Kedah airfield within half an hour, only to find that a thunderstorm had developed along his route back to Ulu Bernam.
His only course was to fly southwards along the Kedah coast in the fading evening light. The storm passed while he was – by his aircraft clock – only a few minutes out from Ulu Bernam, but he was obliged to locate his airstrip from an unfamiliar direction.
It was almost dark. He flew across a new rubber replanting site on the coastal flats – across which a bicycle lamp was steadily making its way. A straight road appeared behind the cyclist. Bek made a U-turn in the Citabria and landed on the road behind the worker.
He jumped out to ask one surprised Indian man of his actual whereabouts. The man explained. In a flash he remembered – a rubber replanting site less than 10 miles cross-country from Ulu Bernam. Good. Now all he needed to do was buzz the Ulu Bernam mill and wait for the Land Rover to light up the other end of his airfield with two sets of runway indicators; it had all been done before.
But first there was the small matter of departure. He requested the awestruck Indian man to cycle to the other end of the field and stand with his kerosene lamp in the centre of the road. Done. Good.
He locked the parking brake and turned over the Lycoming engine. In a few moments, the hot machine was running smoothly. Sitting on his briefcase, he could just make out the wavering kerosene lamp over the top of the engine cowling; he locked his door panel, turned on the landing light, opened the throttle fully and released the brake. The Citabria rolled smoothly down the road and Bek eased the stick forward to raise the tail wheel. The lamp down the road wavered as his speed was building up.
Without warning, his left-hand undercarriage fell away; the propeller hit the road with a ‘whop’ and a terrible snap. Bek was thrown against the cabin roof and the Citabria slid with a hiss into the roadside drain. He somehow found his briefcase and managed to scramble clear.
The Indian man reappeared out of the gloom. “Tuan,” he said, “you rolled off to one side of the centerfield bridge.”
Bek said: “What to do. Too late now. Fifty ringgit to cycle me back opposite to Ulu Bernam, please?”
My God, half a month’s wages to cycle a white man back home. Just wait till he could tell his friends on his return! Bek set off on the back of the old bicycle, the first time he’d done that since he was at school. The journey took over an hour.
The Bernam River ferry attendant, dozing in his cabin on the side of the Sungei Samak, jumped up as surprised as if he had seen a ghost. He burst into roars of laughter at the Indian man’s explanation of the aircraft landing in the gloaming on the rubber replanting road; then later ditching into the roadside drain. Bek accepted a hastily-made hot drink from the ferryman’s wife before setting off on the five-minute journey across the river.
Muthu, Bek’s cook, cried when he heard about the lucky escape and wanted to call a Malay pawang to interpret the omens. Some Ulu Bernam mill staff rushed over to the house. Bek normally never drank by himself but, when he finally sank into his accustomed chair, he was hit by the shakes. It took him fully 10 minutes to settle down, after which he took stock of what had happened.
He told himself: “Well, better count that as ‘a couple of my nine lives’ used up. Still a handful to go!”
The next morning Ralph Grut, General Manager at Jendarata confirmed it: “Bek, next time please try your luck only once. Twice is pushing it!”
Moray K Graham
Retired Planter
