Penang Hills and Trails - Colonel Fettes Legacy
The Batu Ferringhi Aqueducts

This is part of a series of pages on walking the hills of Penang. Click here for the index. This is a Grade 1 walk. There is a sketch map at the bottom showing the route followed.

If you want to see what happens at the end of the tunnel, then five years later I unofficially visited the PBA establishment at the other end,  There's no point in asking for permission, they won't even bother to reply to such a request let along grant it.

Please visit my Penang buses page for information on accessing the starting point.

IMPORTANT

By December 2023, the route from the Bayview Beach Hotel towards the Batu Ferringhi Reservoir past the 'Chin Farm' had been aggressively blocked by razor wire in the area where there is a gate by the water tank. There are also numerous signs stating "NO TRESPASSING - NOT A PUBLIC HIKING TRAIL"

This will mean that there is no longer any access to / from any of these well known paths:

1. That to the Rimba at Teluk Bahang
2. That to RG 17, 18 and 19  (and on to Bukit Batu Ferringhi / Western Hill area)
3. That to RG 20 (and on to Western Hill area)

I do not know about current access through the main gate to the aqueduct above the former Holiday Inn.

Batu Ferringhi is a monument to Malaysian bad taste, few foreign tourists who pitch up here will want to repeat the experience; what was once a few quiet beachside hotels with a palm shaded kampung behind is now a sprawling mass of concrete lined with tacky shops and restaurants. Out of sight behind is another monument, a colonial legacy which has stood the test of time.

Penang is blessed with masses of fresh water, it regularly falls from the skies particularly on the hills which then release it gently into numerous streams. The first major water project was an aqueduct to town from what is now the Waterfall Gardens. There is a long standing major dam at Air Itam and one of more recent (and dubious) construction at Teluk Bahang. This is a wide, low dam which has covered a beautiful valley for relatively little water, so there are no prizes for guessing who built it for the Malaysians.

Back in the 1920s when demand for water was growing but rather less than it is today, Penang's first municipal water engineer, Colonel James Fettes came up with a scheme to collect water from the hills behind Batu Ferringhi and carry it towards George Town by a mixture of aqueducts and pipelines, incorporating what is now the Guillemard Reservoir on Mount Erskine between Tanjung Tokong and Tanjung Bunga. Although technically it is a protected place, in practice no objection is normally raised to visiting the area described but visitors should make a special effort to respect this environment.

Follow the road from the traffic lights next to the Holiday Inn complex, bear right (still Jalan Sungai Satu) past Uplands School and the Eden Seaview Condo and then turn left to the main gate. During the week there is someone here to 'guard' it, twiddling his thumbs watching the joggers and the small boys who bathe in the rock pools. At weekends you have to use the alternative nearby.

Given the date of construction, it is not surprising that the buildings are all in a refreshing 'Art Deco' style although most have been out of use for a long time. The main aqueduct is in the foreground, constructed of concrete slabs:

The road climbs for about half a kilometre and joins the aqueduct near where it finishes and runs into a tunnel which goes through the hill to Tanjung Bunga, the gushing pipe is bringing water from a side valley and the additional pipe increases carrying capacity. If you want to know what happens at the end of the tunnel, then click here.

It would seem that many of the current workforce are Malaysian Indians. The aqueduct is apparently laid on a gradient of 1 in 1800 to keep the water flowing at the right rate. Mostly the road is lined with jungle trees but there are occasional views out, some of which we could have done without:

Further along perhaps not surprisingly the view is dominated by the local Water Works before there is a tantalising glimpse of the National Park beyond Teluk Bahang. I bet the architect for the beautiful Bayview Beach Hotel was of Chinese origin. That's a marvellously functional building with half the bedrooms facing another tower block, from which the view out is now almost completely blocked. However, I wouldn't be including it in my CV if I was applying to join a professional association:

Colonel Fettes would no doubt be curling in his grave if he could see it. Compare the jungle lined graceful curves of his aqueduct, with masses of pitcher plants hanging from the vines and ferns:

A mock up of Francis Light's famous canon marks the end of the main aqueduct at the 3km mark, the 'egg' building covers the take off for a pipeline (presumably to Batu Ferringhi), while the bypass route was closed off during our visit:

The second aqueduct starts at a slightly higher level and is smaller but with a greater flow rate as it is on a 1 in 500 gradient. There is a second, smaller, egg over the start of a pipe which leads to the lower level.

There are three small dams up here:

Necessarily, the aqueduct near the top is much narrower, the terminus is just beyond a small bridge:

Above is the third and last dam, beyond is the trail to Western Hill, the highest peak on the island, probably one of the more demanding walks here for the determined hiker:

By now the light was fading and we quickly returned to the 'Big Egg', taking the small road beyond it on to the concrete road leading down to the main Batu Ferringhi Dam. From there a rough trail leads down through the Chin Estate to the Bayview Beach Hotel. This part is covered in the Forest Trail walk.

Acknowledgement. Some of the information above is taken from an interesting article on the project on the Penang Heritage Trust website, http://www.pht.org.my/?page_id=352.