Skip to content
Culture & HeritageSri Aman Division

Fort Alice

The best-preserved of the Brooke outstation forts — a belian-timber stockade of 1864, restored and reopened as a heritage museum.

By · Editor, I Love Sarawak

Facts checked

The white timber walls, shuttered windows and shingled roof of Fort Alice at Sri Aman
Photo: Woodosan (Public domain)

The place

Fort Alice was built in 1864 at Simanggang — now Sri Aman — to hold the Brooke administration's line on the Batang Lupar during the long campaigns against Iban raiding upriver. It is a timber fort, built largely of belian, raised on posts, with a drawbridge and a lookout tower, and it is the most complete of the outstation forts the Brookes scattered across Sarawak.

After decades of decline it was dismantled, documented and rebuilt in a restoration that reopened it as a heritage museum. The displays cover the fort's own history, the Brooke administration on the Batang Lupar and the Iban communities the fort was built to govern. It sits above the same river that produces the benak, the tidal bore that still runs up to Sri Aman.

Highlights

  1. Belian timber construction — the reason anything survives at all in this climate
  2. The drawbridge and raised stockade, both restored
  3. Displays on the Brooke administration and Iban history of the Batang Lupar
  4. The Batang Lupar itself below, and the benak tidal bore that runs it

Getting there

Ways to reach Fort Alice, compared
HowFromTakesCosts
DriveKuchingabout three to four hoursroughly midway along the Kuching–Sibu road, depending on traffic and the state of the Pan Borneo works; the fort stands on the riverbank in town

Sri Aman is roughly midway along the road from Kuching towards Sibu, a drive of about three to four hours from Kuching depending on traffic and the state of the Pan Borneo works. The fort stands on the riverbank in town.

Good to know

  • Confirm opening days before travelling — this is a small-town museum
  • Sri Aman is the base for the benak tidal bore and Pesta Benak
  • The Skrang River longhouse trips leave from this division
  • An easy stop if you are driving the Kuching–Sibu road rather than flying

Related places