Courtesy of Jerry de Witt, this photograph taken from a MAS aircraft in 1975 clearly shows the Kinta River winding its leisurely way across the valley on its way to Teluk Intan. But don’t miss the tin mines – those large brown patches alongside the river – for in 1975 there was still a tin mining industry here, albeit approaching its “last legs”. Look carefully and you can probably spot a dredge or two clanking away and wresting the black gold from the ground.
Not so long ago was it, just 36 years, but today even though fortunes were made locally we don’t even have a suitable marker of any sort in Ipoh to remember those days gone by or, as Dr Ho Tak Ming put it, when tin was king.