The River West of the Old Town

Once a distinctive tributary beside Kuching’s old bazaar, Sungai Gartak shaped the city’s early communities and trade networks before disappearing beneath urban development in the early twentieth century. Historical maps reveal a river lined with South Indian Muslim and Javanese settlements, bridges, a fire station, and later reclaimed shop houses along Hun Yeang Street. As land reclamation steadily filled the waterway, Sungai Gartak faded from both landscape and memory, leaving only fragments in archival records, old photographs, and archaeological discoveries unearthed during drainage works in 2017. By Chai Kit Siang