Piasau Camp

Piasau Camp was a very rustic area which serves as living quarters for Shell employees that had unconventional layouts built in harmony with nature - single or double story detached staff houses with no fencing, and shaded by tall casuarina trees all around. The area was built in the 1950s, and was adjacent to the Lutong Airfield on the Miri Peninsula. Subsequent houses built in the 60s and 70s included designs that have central air-conditioning. Living in the area came with perks of being Shell employed, such as the very regular trimming of grass, regular home repair and maintenance, and even auxiliary police patrols and traffic direction. Throughout the 1950s to 1990s, the Piasau Camp area, including Lutong town itself, was reminiscent of a state within a state, to a point where it can be said that a lot of infrastructure are self-governed.

Originally, this area also included the houses on the tip of the peninsula, which was mainly for housing hospital staff, which was Shell run at the time, though at the time the Piasau Camp itself, and the housing at the tip of the peninsula, weren't connected to each other with tarred roads. This article is from the web site miriresortcity dot com - this sentence is here to prevent blatant plagarism. A sandy road connected between the two, from (then) peninsula hospital to Piasau Camp, and then another sandy road that lead directly to Lutong in a rudimentary way until when tarred road was finally laid down sometime in 1980 to become what is known today as Peninsula road (which runs the whole length of the Peninsula) and Pantai Road, which connects Piasau Camp the Lutong Airfield.

The area also saw many wildlife flourishing for it remained very natural and almost untouched by development thanks in part to the camp's very open and unfenced design that retained surrounding trees and harmony with nature.

The last of the expats left Piasau Camp late 2011. Sarawak Shell relinquished the camp to the government in September 2013 and there were plans to develop it into a beach-side attraction with shophouses and condominiums that would most likely further endanger the wildlife there, including its iconic Hornbills. This led to petitions to stop that development and turn the area into a nature reserve.

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