Victorias Milling Company (vintage pictures from 1989)
Today I am posting some vintage pictures that I took in 1989 during my first travel in Negros (and in the Philippines). To be back in Negros after so many years was really a trip through memory lane. My love affair with the Philippines started during this first travel.
I was young, free and careless. I wasn’t that much into photography but I had always a camera with me. Of course it was still an analog camera. At that time I was backpacking and traveling on a budget and I couldn’t afford to take many pictures.
Anyway, 19 years after my first visit here, I have the impression that very little has changed. The old steam trains have almost all disappeared but the old trucks are still the same ones… and the local farmers are still as poor as twenty years ago. Yes, very little has changed in Negros Occidental…
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Click image to enlarge.
Click image to enlarge.
I was less camera shy in my younger years and that is indeed me standing next to the conductor of the train.
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The old trains included American Baldwins and Germain Henschells. Nowadays those trains are not in use anymore for hauling the sugarcane from the fields. But you can still see the railway tracks.
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Victorias Milling Company is probably the largest integrated mill and sugar refinery in Asia and is open to the public. Alas you are not allowed to take pictures inside the mill.
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Click image to enlarge.
Inside the mill compound stands the Church of St Joseph the Worker built between 1948 and 1950. Inside the church you can see a huge dense mural by Alfonso Ossorio called The Angry Christ, which depicts a square-jawed Jesus sitting in front of the hands of God.
