SINGAPORE - In a heavy camphor chest in his late parents’ home, an Englishman found a trail of effects leading back to 1950s Singapore - his birthplace.

Among them were a 78rpm record from 1954 of baby Simon Garner’s first cries, taped in the delivery room, then air-mailed to the UK, and a clipping of The Straits Times’ article on the novelty of the newborn’s welcome.

These would set Mr Garner, now 70, on the course back to Singapore this week, for a tour of his early childhood, he told ST over local coffee at a Toast Box on Nov 27.

The retired sales and marketing man took with him the flaking shellac disc of his first cries.

It had been 65 years since his family left for Hong Kong in 1959, but his parents’ thick dossier of their Singapore years - a stack of documents and pictures stowed in his backpack - helped map the contours of their time here.

The Garner family’s first home at Windsor Park Road off Upper Thomson Road, the Green Hill Nursing Home where he was born, the Killarney School and The Dean School where he studied are all shuttered or torn down, he reported.

Only a later home, a colonial bungalow at Cable Road, remains, said Mr Garner, who had written to a local librarian in September to track down the lost addresses.

Built in 1913 by former government architect David McLeod Craik, the black-and-white house in the River Valley area is of some renown, he said.

It is untouched, save for a high wall in place of a low hedge, a new covered pool and taller trees, he added. The portic...