Land Below the Wind
The book that gave Sabah its nickname.
Warren Apel — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Abbylaylena Sitibon — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Abbylaylena Sitibon — CC BY-SA 4.0
An elegant white timber house on the hill overlooking Sandakan Bay, home of the American writer Agnes Newton Keith, who introduced North Borneo to the world in her 1939 book Land Below the Wind, the phrase that still serves as Sabah's nickname today. Agnes married Harry Keith, the British conservator of forests in Sandakan, in 1934, and the couple lived in a house on this hill that was destroyed in the Second World War, after the Japanese interned the family for three years, an ordeal she later described in her famous book Three Came Home. After the war a new house was built on the hill between 1946 and 1947, on the site of another house lost in the war; named Newlands, it was the first permanent government timber dwelling in Sabah, and the family lived there for several more years. The house was restored and opened as a museum in 2004, with colonial-era furniture and genuine antiques, and an upstairs gallery telling the story of Agnes, her books and her family, along with wartime artefacts. A ticket for non-Malaysians is fifteen ringgit, and it usually opens from nine in the morning to five in the afternoon. It sits on the hill above the town centre next to an English-style tea house serving tea with a view of the bay, and the walk up is part of the Sandakan Heritage Trail, which also passes St Michael's Church and other landmarks of the old town.
The book that gave Sabah its nickname.
Colonial furniture and genuine antiques.
An English tea house above the bay.
Jalan Istana, on the hill above central Sandakan
An American writer who lived in Sandakan with her British husband and wrote three autobiographical books about life in North Borneo, the best known being Land Below the Wind and Three Came Home, about the family's wartime internment, which became a Hollywood film in 1950.
