Most places I have visited in Sarawak so far all have an animal as a mascot—whether official or unofficial. For Sibu, it’s the swan; for Miri, the seahorse; and for Kuching, the cat. The egret (or bangau) is the (unofficial) symbol of Bintulu. Throughout the city, you can see various statues and art objects featuring egrets.
I even saw a few real ones in the town and on Tanjung Batu Beach.
But why an egret? That’s what I wanted to find out. However, official sources in English were hard to come by. It became almost a mystery. I decided to dig into it anyway.
Before 1969, when oil and gas were discovered, Bintulu was a quiet, small-scale fishing village surrounded by coastal mangroves and nature. Due to the city’s location by the South China Sea and the many migratory birds in the nearby mangrove forests and wetlands, several egret statues and artworks have been placed throughout the city over time.
In the 1980s, the Bintulu Development Authority (BDA) started building roundabouts to accommodate the city’s growth. Back then, egret structures were built at the second roundabout to serve as a visual gateway to the city. The roundabout was replaced by a traffic light in 2012. Photos of this structure are rare to find via Google.
One of the most impressive statues I saw was the ‘Anak Bintulu’ created by Low Chee Peng on Tanjung Batu Beach. A friend pointed out to me that it is actually a head, and the reason for the head is integrated in the local head hunting practices in the past. That would have been sensible looking at the local indigenous expression “Mentu Ulau” (picking heads) for Bintulu, which I shared in my previous story. However, this description was a bit different: A head with three egrets on top of it, symbolising Bintulu’s gradual local development.
In case you have more information, please do let me know.
By the way, the official symbol of Sarawak is the Rhinoceros Hornbill (Kenyalang).