This talk by Mr Ken Goodlet took place on Thursday 1st July at the Secretariat.
Mr Goodlet taught in Tawau in the late sixties to early seventies and while there became very interested in finding out as much as he could about the area, its history and its people. He researched the history of the town and the area, learning the various origins of the name Tawau, the development of the local industries, the various groups of people who lived there from the early Bugis and Suluk settlers to the Tidong, Arab, Chinese, Bajau Laut, Dutch, Japanese and British. Always interested in placing people in their environmental and hereditary context, he set his secondary age students the task of interviewing their elders. This led to his interviewing many of the long term residents then seeking to authenticate these oral traditions as much as he could from the rather patchy documentary information then available, much of which was in the Sabah State Archives.
His University of Sydney Master’s thesis The Origin and Early Development of the Tawau Community, 1880 – 1942 became the basis for bringing the history of Tawau up to date, which was the next challenge Mr Goodlet set himself. He was delighted to find that The Australian National Library in Canberra proved to be a rich source of information, having a completely unexpected collection of Sabah Newspapers to which he could refer. He then made return visits to Sabah to interview even more people, many of whom were his former students, and to expand his research. The result was this very readable book which is currently the only one of its kind in Sabah.
The photograph shows Mr Goodlet presenting a copy of his book to The Sabah Society’s President, Datuk Chan Chew Lun.
