Somewhere along Upper Bukit Timah Road is an estate called Dairy Farm -- which is strange because there aren't any farms anywhere nearby.

There's a nature park, a quarry, even a heavy vehicle parking spot, but not a cow in sight.

So where or what is this "Dairy Farm" in this ulu place?

Story time:

In the 1930s, a man named Fred Heron, the Managing Director of Cold Storage — then called the Singapore Cold Storage Company — started the world's first tropical dairy farm at the foothills of Bukit Timah.

The goal of the farm was to provide fresh pasteurised milk for the children of expatriates. This farm was called the Singapore Dairy Farm.

The pasteurised milk that the farm produced was sold under a brand you're most likely to recognise: Magnolia.

And it was packaged in pyramid-shaped cartons like this:

The Singapore Dairy Farm was situated inside what is today known as the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve. Over time, the farm came to be populated by a herd of 800 cows.

Somehow managed to rear cows more used to cold countries

The farm would become the first in the world to have had successfully reared Friesian cows in an equatorial region.

Friesian cows generally thrive better in temperate regions. The hot temperatures in a tropical area can affect their fertility and their feed intake, which usually leads to poorer nutrition and higher mortality.

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A scientific wonder

Heron's success in rearing Friesian cows in Singapore attracted foreign scientists and farming experts all over the world to study his dairy farm. It became such a sensation that the road and nature park beside it took on its name.

"Singapore Dairy Farm was the only European dairy farm near Bukit Timah Hill. It was a beautiful dairy farm... beautifully kept. The manager was a European. Generally these workers were Indians. South Indians generally.

[The] Veterinary Department was controlled by one North Indian and one European. They had some [exercise] department for cows and others, calves, so they can have their exercises."

- Mohinder Singh, National Archives oral interview (Accession Number 000546)

There isn't enough information out there to explain why Singapore Dairy Farm closed down in the 1970s.

Today, the sole remnant of the farm stands in the form of a cow shed which houses the Wallace Education Centre, a field study hub for schools.

The centre was named after evolution naturalist Alfred Wallace, who studied Singapore biodiversity in 1854.

The surrounding area is now a nature park and a quarry.

Top photos via NAS.