As far as people know, there are only two surviving bucket line tin dredges in Malaysia. One is the Tanjung Tualang Tin Dredge near Batu Gajah. The other is located near Dengkil in Selangor.

The Dengkil dredge can be seen from a distance since it is visible from the main road when driving to the airport.

Thanks to Google Maps it was easy to find the best way to approach the dredge which is surrounded by lakes created by the dredge’s excavations.

A gravel road takes you part of the way. This road is busy with rubbish trucks as one of the lakes is being used as a landfill.

Park your car next to the lake and walk for the rest of the way, about 1 km each way. The path is not too overgrown, and there are no “No Trespassing” signs. There was a barrier blocking the way to cars but again no “Keep Out” signs.

The dredge is an enormous piece of engineering. According to Liz Price’s excellent blog, this is the Sri Banting Dredge, built in Malaysia in 1974 (much newer than the colonial-era Tanjung Tualang dredge) and weighs 4,800 tonnes.

It was not possible to go on board as it was moored a few metres off-shore and there was no gangplank. Anyway, it is private property. There were a couple of vigilant watchdogs on the dredge to deter trespassers.

No doubt this dredge is earmarked for sale at some stage. Many of the other tin dredges in Malaysia were sold off to foreign buyers such as this one which was towed to Bangka Island in Indonesia in 1987.

If no buyer can be found, it would probably be sold for scrap and that will be the end of Selangor’s tin mining heritage.

At least the Tanjung Tualang dredge is being preserved as a museum by the Perak State Government and is opened to the public to visit.

This article first appeared in http://thriftytraveller.wordpress.com