Make Woolley collection a State Heritage: DCM
Published on: Friday, June 29, 2018
Kota Kinabalu: The last of The Diaries of George C. Woolley Volume 3: 1913-1919 and Volume 4: 1919-1926 were done and launched, Thursday, by Tourism, Culture and Environment Assistant Minister Assaffal Alian, who represented Deputy Chief Minister cum Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister Christina Liew."Due to its historical significance, I think it's the right time that the Sabah Museum commences to have the Woolley collection of diaries and glass negatives considered as State Heritage under the new State Heritage Enactment 2017, Part VIII," Christina said. Reflecting the feat that had finally put to bed various foundered attempts to get Woolley's treasured diaries published since its need was felt on the day Sabah Museum was founded in 1965, Stella Moo-Tan, who worked with key collaborator on the project, Prof Datuk Danny Wong, said:
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"We are both over the moon to see the back of it."Prof Danny said he felt a great sense of destination after "a very long tedious and laborious journey." Woolley started keeping diaries with extraordinary discipline the day he boarded ship in the UK on April 26, 1901 heading for Sandakan, arriving there on June 10, and kept regular diary till Oct 16, 1945 at the end of the war, said Prof Danny. Unfortunately, the diaries covering 1927 to 1940 had been lost presumably in the war.
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The diaries from 1901 to 1926 kept in 12 notebooks covering 2,109 pages were bequeathed to the British North Borneo government, in addition to a collection of some 3,000 pictures and artefacts.Volume 1, published in 2015 in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of Sabah Museum, highlighted Woolley's turn of the 20th century perspective of North Borneo between 1901 and 1907, and covered 509 pages of the diaries.
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Volume 2 was published in 2016."Since Volume 1 was published in 2015, we have had the honour of having Woolley Diaries nominated by Malaysia for the Unesco Memory of the World List in 2017. But, unfortunately, we did not make the List, the reason being that the Diaries were not complete, lacking three or maybe four notebooks, that is up to 1932 when Woolley retired," noted Stella Moo."Nevertheless, the nomination of the G. C. Woolley Diaries for the Unesco Memory of the World has been recognised as an important national heritage, which is a plus for the Sabah Museum," said Stella. On Volume 3, Prof Danny sad: "It covers the period between Woolley's return from his second furlough or long leave in 1913 and his next long leave in 1919. It also covers the crucial period of World War One or the Great War.""During this third tour of duty, Woolley was stationed mainly in Jesselton, the West Coast. He returned to serve as Commissioner of Lands, a post he held briefly before the end of his second tour. It was this long association with the Land Office that Woolley was considered an expert on the Land laws of Sabah. He was instrumental in introducing the 1013 Land Ordinance and later had a hand in formulating the 1930 Land Ordinance which served as the basis of our land laws today," Prof Danny paid tribute to Woolley. On Volume 4, Stella said: "There are so many interesting things to talk about in Volume 4, but of significance will be about the photographs (which applies also to Vol 3) when Woolley was Resident of the Interior Province, and of his intrepid travels there." "There are 260 images in Vol. 4 plus 16 coloured maps, from the excellent layout professionally done by Opus Publications, to splendid photographs produced to accompany the text, I assure you that you will not be disappointed," Stella asserted. She confessed that however a treasure was Woolley's collection of photographs, many of them from the 16 albums were not clear, but through special re-photographing techniques from Uwe Aranas from Cologne, Germany and local counterpart Suhaino Sutarman from Melalap Estate in Tenom, they had transformed dull and hazy images into bright, sharp crisp pictures of old North Borneo. Stay up-to-date by following Daily Express’s Telegram channel.
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