Author: Bob Harrison

The primary crop of many of our hosts in Borneo was rice. I remember seeing a lot of rice paddies over the course of our stay there. We also went to the hills and saw highland slash and burn agriculture, but mostly I remember rice grown in paddies.
Here are some shots of rice farming taken by my dad. He grouped these three shots together so I’m keeping them just that way.

On a side note, I really don’t need to keep the slides once I’m done with them. I’ve contacted a group of scholars who, back in the day, were probably involved academically with my dad and asked if they wanted them. We’ll see. There aren’t any notes to go along with them so they’ll be of limited value, but I’ve no one to leave them to (unless there are a few with me in them…those may stay in the family).

Here’s one last shot of Mount Kinabalu. This was taken by my father from the guest house run by the government in the Ranau District of Sabah. As I recall, we stayed there for a brief period after our arrival in Borneo before we moved into our more permanent residence. I’m hoping I’ll find photos of that home in the future.

I know when we left the place we had to cross at least one river on a very long and unstable looking bamboo bridge. My memory of that is that I was very displeased by the affair.
This shot brought back a lot of memories (as they all have to be honest). I recall the very ordered greenness, if you will, of the place. Having seen pictures of Ranau today I have to say, it’s quite different from what I remember, but what isn’t after 54 years?

Mount Kinabalu was a daily site from my bedroom window when I was child. It was off in the distance, but definitely a presence. My dad, the anthropologist, had us living in the Ranau District of Sabah in North Borneo, now part of Malaysia.
He was a bit of an adventurer as you might surmise. I mean, who takes their family off into the wilds of Borneo in the early 60’s. My dad, that’s who.
I guess looking at that mountain every day was a bit much for him and he decided it was something he just had to climb. He signed my mom up for the journey (she being a bit of an adventurer herself). By the way, “signing up” in those days did not mean engaging a tour company. It meant organizing a climb pretty much on your own. As I understand it, and from the photos I’ve seen, Mount Kinabalu doesn’t require Everest or Matterhorn mountaineering skills…just legs, stamina, a decided lack of fear (or a healthy one perhaps), and local guidance.
Off they went. They came back to (or I’d be writing this from a village in Ranau with Malaysian citizenship no doubt – and in Malay instead of English to boot – yes, I spoke it at age 5…like a 5 year old).
Here’s a set of shots which I described on FB as:

More scanned shots…probably the last for the day. As I’m sure you all know, Kinabalu is a mountain in the Sabah state of Malaysia. We could see the peak from our home in Ranau when I was a kid and my mom and dad climbed it. I was probably 5 at the time so I was left out. I may have to go back. Here’s a set of photos from Kinabalu and one from a plane of a village. I do not know if my father took these shots as I do not recognize anything or anyone in the photos and because the slides are labeled “KODACHROME DUPLICATE, Made by Kodak (Malaysia) Limited.” He may have had these copied from someone else’s set (contact me if these are yours or your family’s…love to hear the story), purchased them (was that a thing in 1963?), or they may, in fact, be his…no clue.

This may be a street scene in Singapore circa 1964. It’s from the collection of slides my father made on our trip to Sabah in North Borneo. In 1964 I was six and a jungle explorer and world traveler.
My friend Nathan, on seeing a copy of this on FB said:
“Looks like Cantonese romanization of the Chinese characters. Malaysia? Could be Singapore.”
So…I’m pretty sure I got that one right. At first I thought perhaps Kota Kinabalu, Jesselton at the time, but the business records pretty much confirmed it for me.
All in all I have a couple of hundred slides and it’s going to take quite some time to go through them. Today I sorted them into piles by slide type, Ektachrome, Kodachrome, and by sort of font used on the slide printing. My next sort will be to sort each of those categories by anything written on them, in some cases my dad numbered them, in others he alpha characters. Then I’ll get down to scanning them. I decided the willy-nilly method wasn’t going to cut it for me. Damn my computer programming skills…must sort, classify, and refactor.

Sigh.

This image has everything…people, homes, laundry, dinner preparations, a child and…yes, a dog. Of course it’s 1963 and somewhere in Borneo, but to me it looks very familiar. I should note, I’m not the child.
In fact, I’m not sure I’m going to turn up in any of these images and that’d be okay with me. I have so many memories of that time, though undoubtedly, as with any memory, some of the probably never happened.
Some did though…I got the mumps there and was treated with an evil smelling paste that included ground up frog. Yes…frog. One of the nights my parents were gone on a trip to climb Mt. Kinabalu, leaving me with my ahma, there was a huge thunderstorm with lightning that looked like it was hitting the mountain. I was terrified. And, well…too many to recount.
Here’s that picture of village life.

I’m sitting here rather stunned, quite pleased, and yes, a bit nostalgic and sad.
When I was four, five, and six, we lived in the Ranau District of Sabah, now part of Malaysia. It was in the process of being turned over to Malaysia by the British who, at the time, were in charge.
My dad was a cultural anthropologist, also named Robert Harrison…case you’re wondering…and he was doing his field research, wife and child in tow.
I have a lot of memories, but never really thought I’d see the place again. As it turns out, I may never return (though it’s not out of the question), but I am getting to see the place again, through the eyes of my father and the photographs he took. At one time he had thousands and, sadly, they are lost. Somehow, I still have a box of old slides, papers, and some other things. I’m not quire sure how they survived, but I’m starting to scan them as I said in my last post.
Currently I have no order to them…they’re a bit random, though now that I can see that they can be scanned, I’ll probably try to organize them before continuing the process. Of course it might even be easier just to scan them, then use digital means to sort them into related subjects.
They are documentary in nature, but he did have a bit of an eye for composition. Further, he must have learned exposure pretty well as slide film is not nearly as forgiving as negatives for prints.
Here’s another example, a group of men and a woman laying out a framework for something. Note the rather large knives, parangs I believe. I used to have a child size one. Yep, everyone had big knives.

I’m intrigued by the woman entering the frame. I have another picture with a woman in it who is covering her face. I also recall, though I was very young and this was some 55 years ago, that not everyone would allow themselves to be photographed. Not so different from today.
I’ll have more on this going forward. It’s too late to do more tonight, but boy, am I anxious to see what other treasures these slides may hold.

As you’ve noticed if you’ve recently read my blog (both of you…you know who you are), you’ll know I recently purchased a new film scanner. It’s a PrimeFilm XA and you can find examples of my scanning 35mm negatives in recent posts.
Well…today I was attempting to clean up a little, as well as find a couple of old cameras I knew to be around, and discovered a box of slides. Yes, those good old slides you’d need a carousel projector for back in the day.
These are slides taken by my father, most likely in Borneo and other parts of Asia when I was a child between the ages of four and six.
Turns out my scanner can do slides. Turns out they aren’t all ruined, even after fifty plus years. Go figure.

 
I’m not quite sure what to say about all this…other than, I’ll be scanning a lot of slides in the future. Wow.

This shot is a color shot, all the way. When I shot it I was trying for as B&W an image as I could make using color film. I haven’t done much with besides up the contrast just wee bit after scanning it. I could have just as easily done it when I scanned, but then it’d be baked in. This way I can go back and tweak some more.
After scanning I noticed a couple of small red flowers that had blown into the scene. Originally I’d thought about actually converting my not-quite-B&W shot to B&W, but once I saw those flowers I had to leave it alone.

I have rare free evening and, after doing my laundry (I can hear the sighs of relief), I decided to try my hand at scanning a bit more.
DUST! Not my friend. Luckily I’ve got the tools to fix things up, but still.
In any case, now that I can post to WP, here’s what I played with. I’m pretty sure this is from my Canonet GIII QL17 using Ilford SFX 200. Or something like that…I’m really going to have to keep better records.