After drifting back into Kuala Belait, I found life pushing me along again before I’d even caught my breath. Frank Cowan—an old seminary mate I hadn’t seen in years—turned up fresh from leave and insisted I join him on a trip across the mud‑soaked road to Miri. We arrived drenched to the skin, the monsoon hammering us like it had a personal grudge, only to find Bishop Galvin preparing for a pastoral run to Brunei and happy enough to haul us along in his jeep. The real moment for me, though, came when we rolled into Seria and I met Fr Leo Barry at last—tall, sun‑browned, dressed head‑to‑toe in old Borneo whites, standing like he owned the very light around him. He’d built the parish, the house, the school—everything—and though the place had barely existed a decade earlier, he’d somehow turned it into a thriving little world. Yet under all his quiet pride, I could sense the strain between him and the bishop, a sort of uneasy air that made both of us shift from foot to foot. And so, without quite meaning to, I stepped onto the next stage of my journey, feeling rather like a character making his entrance in the second act—unsure of the script, but very much in the play.
I had now been in Kuching, Sibu and Miri, the three great stations of the former vicariate of Kuching; to them Seria was a parvenu and, as often is the case when parvenus arrive on the scene, they put the others in the shade. The house was a two-storey timber and concrete structure with verandah on the upper floor; it sparkled in the sunlight. It was essentially a simple structure but clean, airy and bright. The rooms were upstairs; on the ground floor were the offices and dining room.
Standing behind Leo that afternoon was the genial Liew Chong Kee the mission cook. He waited till the greetings were over before grabbing my hand in a vice-like grip and kissed it. He had come to the mission via Shell who had recruited domestics from Hong Kong. He was the man who could do everything. He cleaned the house, the church, he was responsible for the beautiful garden, he kept chickens. He loved electricity. He was fearless in handling plugs and adaptors. I used to close my eyes expecting him to dissolve in a blue flash. He was a widower at the time I met him and a few years later he remarried. His wife Mah Lee was the perfect housewife, but always dogged by ill-health. Eventually they set up their own little farm, pig-breeding, keeping chickens and growing vegetables.
Chong Kee was the original green fingers. He was disconsolate when Mah Lee succumbed to her illness and lost heart in everything. One Christmas Eve we were informed by a neighbour that he had been killed- murdered. We rushed to the house but such was the intransigence of our local police that we were not allowed in to pray over the body. We had to stand outside the fence and bless him from a distance; we could see his head had been crushed. Brunei police have a very poor detection rate and so, for all that the local people knew who were responsible, the murderers got away with it. He was killed for his bit of money. In the peace and serenity of Brunei such a thing was unheard of and unbelievable.
Seria Church, dedicated to Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, was the best building in town; in fact it was many years before any other mission had a church anyway like it. It had been designed by a Shell architect and would not have been out of place in rural England with its tall steeple. It was bright and airy inside with a large sanctuary. Its seating capacity would be about 600. A choir loft with an electric organ and choir on Sundays and holidays provided an atmosphere which suited a cosmopolitan parish community. The money for this church was raised entirely by the people, mainly by deductions from their salary at the pay counter in Shell, where both the chief and assistant cashiers were prominent parishioners. Of course the usual fund-raising events were well exploited.
Alongside the church was the long two-storey St Michael’s School, the pioneer Catholic secondary in the State. The front was almost entirely louvre windows. Like the house and church it was surrounded by masses of flowers and bushes. The name was not known then but it was certainly ” user-friendly”.
The Catholic Mission occupied a prominent place in the life of the oil-field. It was in response to Shell’s concern for the education of their employees’ children that the school had been started and they expressed their gratitude in many ways. The pioneering oil-men recognised their equals in both Leo and Gerard, who was the school-man, and treated them as their own. So close was the contact that clerical wags had it that Leo was head of the Shell Religious Department. When the Brunei Government new Land Transport Department began to register vehicles, the Managing Director of Shell was allotted KB1 ( Kuala Belait ), Gerard Rottinghuis got KB 2; the European District Officer had KB 3 and Leo was given KB 4. There is no record available of what was said to whom when Leo discovered that his assistant had stolen a march on him. KB4, a Morris Oxford, was still in active service when I arrived but was replaced soon after. Leo was disappointed that a car with such a prestigious licence plate did not go to the highest bidder. In fact there is no sentiment nor history for Asians when money is concerned. I remember two simply-dressed Chinese men came up from Miri, tried the engine and bought it. The fact that they were simply dressed did not mean that they were poor peasants; very often, it could mean the very opposite.
Perhaps this was symptomatic of a change of life and attitude to be seen in the oil-field. The evolution of the oil industry is such that the time comes when the pioneers, the oil-men, move away to some other adventure and then the bureaucrats and technocrats move in. I was able to observe the gradual erosion of the once close contacts between the Company and the mission. All the little perks, free access to their facilities, began to be withdrawn, much to Leo’s chagrin. The following year, Shell abolished the traditional holiday on Good Friday ( very many of the workers were Christians ) at the instigation of the Government, which was Moslem. Leo protested and managed to arrange an interview with the new manager. To add weight to his words, he had asked Bishop Galvin to come with him. When they arrived at the manager’s office, he was nowhere to be found. This was the end of an era.
Although Leo was a formidable figure, he was a great host and never stinted on food. Frequently we would have priests coming in from North Borneo, either passing through to Miri or to visit the Shell hospital. Leo knew that often they were coming from fairly primitive conditions, as he had experienced himself among the Ibans, and saw to it that everything they needed was provided. The house was spotlessly clean. Chong Kee waged his own personal war against mosquitos and every night about 5pm he would pull down the nets over the bed to ensure for us a night’s rest undisturbed. Once a mosquito got inside, that was the end of sleep- until early in the morning what time we were expected to be up and about.
No matter about how late we stayed up at night, we had to be ready in the morning for mass and the day’s work. Down the road from us was the mosque. Each morning at 4.30, the muezzin reminded us that Allah is Great. Other disturbances would be a frog battle in the monsoon drain. The locals believed that when the blue frogs waged war on the brown, some calamity would follow. Once this talk got round, it would be followed by tales of head-hunting in the jungle, which after all began just behind the town. Much later, came the “oily-men” -in the local language “orang minyak” ( oil ); this was not to do with Shell, who were known as “orang kompeni” -but creatures covered in oil, so that no one could grab them in a fight. Of course these had to come from Indonesia. All this may seem fanciful to us, but Borneo is steeped in superstition.
As the dust of those early school days settles, a new chapter quietly stirs on the horizon—full of unfamiliar faces, small triumphs, and the hum of a world I was only beginning to understand. What waited just beyond that first flurry of chalk and chatter was something far richer: the stories hidden in the corridors, the characters who would shape my journey, and the unexpected turns that would pull me deeper into life at St Michael’s. Step with me into the next episode—there’s much more about to unfold.
