How did these cars end up abandoned in a forest here?

Bukit Brown cemetery has hogged headlines, but its forest contains remnants of history too

- Cherie Lok

The cars were likely left behind when the village was vacated in the 1980s and 1990s. ST PHOTOS: BRIAN TED The cars have attracted many hikers to the forest around Bukit Brown. The dilapidated exterior of one of the cars, with its roof caved in.

(BRIAN TED)

I stand on a patch of soil, flecked with rubber debris, and try to imagine the scene: Was it a car crash? Four vehicles hightailing it through the forest, meeting their messy end in a tangle of vines and branches? Were they flung off the nearby Pan-Island Expressway (PIE) and left to dissolve into obscurity thereafter?

They make a surreal scene, cars from the 1970s scattered beneath the canopy in various states of disrepair. Two retain a recognisable shape, though time and spray paint have chipped away at the original coat.

The front door of one has been removed, as if waiting for someone to slide into the driver's seat and grip the mossy steering wheel with both hands, maybe even give the radio a go, though who knows what eerie frequency it might be tuned to these days.

The third lies some distance away in a roofless heap. The fourth, mostly trampled into the soil, is identifiable only by its steering wheel. Around the cars are strewn other enigmas: a bowling pin in a boot, a Senma rubber sandal camouflaged by dried leaves. The path leading in is strewn with spare tyres and car parts.

This is the climax of my brief hike through the wilds of Bukit Brown, guided only by a point on Google Maps that marks the start of the Abandoned Car Trail.

I had seen photographs of the cars online and was gripped by curiosity, unable to believe this scene truly existed in a country as blanched of intrigue or so it sometimes seems as Singapore.

Surely it will all make sense in context, I thought, and so set off on an unmarked path through the woodland behind the famed cemetery.