Site Visit: Kuching River Barrage and Shiplock

By H.C. Wee

Kuching River Barrage and Shiplock is built for controlling the water level in Kuching Town Area and preventing the sea(salty) water flow into the town. This barrage began it's operation since 1998, it consists for 5 barrage gates and a lock for fishing ships and/or sampans sailing through the bottom of bridge. We have visited the barrage yesterday afternoon, started the bus from Swinburne Campus at around 1:30pm, reached the barrage at around 1:55pm.

The entrance of Kuching River Barrage and Shiplock.

After we walked into the station, we are welcomed by a officer of there, he is actually the instructor of us later. We were invited to go into the controlling room and gave a presentation for us to introduce the barrage, then he let us to look around the controlling room and explained the functions of every monitors on the counter.

Our instructor.

The system controlling center of the station.

I found a lot of maps and plans on wall in controlling room. The maps shows that this barrage previously was a land. The original exit of Kuching River is located southern of this area, now is blocked.

The plan view of Sarawak River Barrage. The system controlling building is located at the right side of  the river.

We are then followed the instructor to visit the motor rooms and take looks of the barrage gates. Unfortunately, the barrage gates was closed because the sea water level was higher than river water level at that time. We didn't had chance to see the gates open, but the instructor is very friendly and he allowed us to take photos around the station. He also told us a lot of story about this barrage and Kuching River. According to him, we know that there currently has an another barrage project near Satok.

Used hydraulic lifting cylinders, looks like have around 60cm diameter.

The shiplock, to sea.

The other side of shiplock, to upriver of Sungai Kuching.