A welfare pioneer, Gus Borgeest established a farm colony on desolate Sunshine Island, Hong Kong, to teach refugees how to raise crops on marginal land. With him is his wife, Mona, and Ruth, one of their daughters.
A freighter moored to a Hong Kong harbor buoy off-loads its cargo into junks and lighters. There most cargo is handled in this way, rather than by transferring it directly to piers.
Fishing junks sail along Tolo Channel, one of the deep-water inlets in the Eastern New Territories of Hong Kong. The bleak hills are characteristic of the colony’s predominately rocky, barren terrain.
Refugees from Red China collect tin, tar paper, scrap lumber and sacking for use in making their flimsy shelters. Multi-story concrete resettlement developments are gradually replacing such shacks in Hong Kong.
Opening of the new Kai Tak Airport brought the colony an additional gain by freeing 70 acres of the old field for industrial development.
Less than half a mile from the seaward end of Kai Tak, the first new town in the government’s history is being built—Kwun Tong, an industrial, commercial and residential area along the northeastern shore of Kowloon Bay. A ten-year project of large extent, it required the removal of a whole range of hills. The spoil was then hauled to the bay and dumped behind a protecting seawall 2,477 feet long. The leveled hills and the land reclaimed from the sea will provide a 514-acre site, close to a square mile, for an industrial center whose population is expected to reach 300,000 within a few years.