Dairy Farm Nature Park adjoins Bukit Timah Nature Reserve. It’s basically the other side of the mountain to Bukit Timah, but is quieter and doesn’t have as many monkeys hanging about.
The park has both hiking and mountain bike trails and if you come on a weekend the car park is crammed. Be warned that if you try to do the right thing and park across the road in the truck parking section you will get a ticket. We learnt that the hard way on our previous trip here.
We had an almost full day of rain yesterday so the trail from Dairy Farm to the Bukit Timah summit was very muddy and slippery so I opted for the shorter Wallace Trail.
Wallace Trail
The paved road up to the education centre.
Mountain bike track.
I wish I could wax lyrical about the beauty of the jungle but I spent most of my time watching my footing and keeping an eye out for snakes! The track was only a couple of hundred metres long, as I think I took the shorter route when I got to a fork in the track. However this turned out to be a lucky break as when I emerged into a clearing I met J, who was out photographing butterflies for his blog Blue Bottle. Despite being only 14 he has been blogging about butterflies for over 5 years and knows pretty much all there is to know about Singaporean butterflies, of which there are over 300 varieties! He showed me a place further up the hill where there were loads of butterflies and I tried to capture them but I left my big lens at home. I also may be a bit too heavy-footed to be a nature photographer but J did show me how butterflies will usually keep returning to the same plant, so patience is the name of the butterfly photographing game!
Lace Wing.
Swallow Tail.
Hmmm…Banded Imperial (I think).
Just behind where J showed me the butterflies is an abandoned colonial house. I have no idea how long it has been empty for but I came up with quite a few imaginary stories about the people it would have housed. I assume that it was taken over by the Japanese during their occupation but must’ve been occupied after this period as there was electric light fittings.
Someone here played mahjong.
Dairy Farm Nature Park is at
100 Dairy Farm Road
Parking is free.
You can take bus service SMRT 700, 700A or 966 and alight at bus stop along Petir Road between Chestnut Ave and Dairy Farm Road.
(Apologies if I got any of the butterfly’s names wrong, J!)
Ooh just seen bus 966 goes direct from our condo – this is a must (hubby away for 2 weeks on 22nd so will investigate then) thx B
Lovely blog!! I enjoyed it thoroughly.
Don’t worry about the butterfly names. Here they are:
1. Malay lacewing
2. Banded swallowtail
3. Branded Imperial
I’ll pop by soon!
I didn’t realise there were that many snakes in Singapore to worry about!!!!! Can you expand on that for me……..
Ah, so you can start them blogging at nine, then? I’ve been wondering…