7th Mile Bukit Timah, Singapore

Watercolour depicting burning buildings and barbed wire and a rifle in the foreground. The heaviest fighting on Singapore Island took place at this spot. The Japanese, whose losses were terrific, later erected a shrine close by in memory of the dead but eventually destroyed it upon their capitulation in 1945. The Australians lost and recaptured this corner several times in the last days before the surrender in 1942. This picture was painted in the cell D3, 36, in Changi prison by Allister Greig who was a soldier in the first AIF and a civilian internee in Singapore from 1942 to 1945. Allister Greig was a South Australian-born commercial artist who served in the first AIF and was a civilian internee in Singapore from 1942 to 1945. He was an amateur magician and was caught by prison guards performing magic tricks for POWs in Changi. The guards thought he was making secret signals, and put him into solitary confinement as punishment. In these cells, originally intended for Asiatic prisoners, three Europeans were forced to live in isolation for 22 months before being transferred to Sime Road Internment Camp.