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Hong Kong ,Stonecutters in 1975
written by David Commerford
 Stonecutters
From1960 to 1975 I had at different times spent around five and a half years in Hong-Kong, always based at Sham Shui Po and always less than a mile from the enigmatic island of Stonecutters.
Apart from carefully prescribed areas the island was strictly of limits and although over the years I had swum at the Army beach lido on numerous occasions, and had transported by boat both stores and personnel from pier to pier, I had never been able to explore ,but now all that was about to change. The newly independent 415 Maritime Troop R.C.T. was abandoning Sham Shui Po and moving to our new location, East Pier, Stonecutters Island
The abandoned Joint Service Transmitting Station, Its great tall skeleton masts still standing, had been housed inside the uncompleted wall of what had been originally intended to be a prison. The northern and southern walls still stood, each with a circular tower at the seaward or eastern end. The quarter allocated to my family was in the upper left hand floor of the old gate house, a large imposing building containing three other flats. The centre of the building consisted of two half round towers, between these could still be seen the closed archway once intended to be the prisons’ main entrance, access to the upper flats was by way of doors set into the inner part of the towers so as to face each other. Once through the door you were faced by a spiral staircase that led to the upper floor at the top of which you were given a choice of two more doors, the one to the left leading to the flats veranda, the one in front to the flat itself. Leading from the walled off archway was a straight drive of some 50 yards to the beach.
It is the only place I have ever lived where I could lay in my bed of a night and listen to the wash and suck of the waves as they played with the shingle on the beach.
The building of the prison was apparently abandoned when the young Colony suffered a smallpox epidemic and the island became an isolation centre in an attempt to quarantine those infected, This may have led to the one known grave on the island but for whatever reason the building was abandoned for some years until its’ occupancy by the Navy who still used it on occasion when training locally enlisted personnel as Naval ratings. The only permanent naval personnel on the island were a dog and the civilian caretaker come gardener who kept an eye on her and fed her when her rations came over. Able seaman Lady, known as Girly, must have been one of the last survivors of the naval tradition of keeping pets as part of a ships contingent. She was a large black and tan Chow and had the freedom of the Island; quite often she would wander into the office to take advantage of the air conditioning. Her Naval background became blindingly apparent one day when, the Navy being in residence, they piped colours. I was approaching Girly on my way to work and had in my hand a particularly juicy bone for her. Seeing her treat she trotted towards me. As the ‘Still’ sounded every one stood still except Girly who sat and at the ‘Carry on’ she stood and came for her treat. How many hundreds of times had she done that I wondered.
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