About The Kallang River

         The Kallang River (Chinese: 加冷河, Malay: Sungei Kallang) flows for 10 kilometres from the Lower Peirce Reservoir to the coast at Nicoll Highway, making it the longest river in Singapore. The river mouth was traditionally at Kallang Basin, although extensive land reclamation around the area meant the river only flows into the open sea via the Marina Channel between Marina Centre and Marina East.

History : In pre-colonial times, the aboriginal Biduanda Orang Kallang tribe lived in the swamps at the mouth of the Kallang River, and fished from their boats, seldom venturing out into the open sea. At the time of Sir Stamford Raffles landing in Singapore in 1819, half of the population of 1,000 were the Orang Kallang.

Kallang River was also the place, where in the early days the Bugis traders from Sulawesi (Celebes) unloaded their cargoes of spices and tortoise shells, gold dust and slaves from their palari or their leteh-leteh. These sailing boats were a common sight off the sea front even up to the 1960ss.

Today, this long, winding river has little or no industry except for a short distance, although a new industrial estate at Kallang Basin, near Kallang Bahru, has been built.