Fresh, dark grey to black, shales with minor sandstones of the Triassic Gemas Formation outcrop at the slope cut between Km 81.30 and 81.05 (southbound) of the North-South Expressway near Ayer Hitam in Johore State. The beds strike 165o with eastward dips of 35o to 43o and have thickness of between 0.2 and 1.5 m. Over-lying the fresh bedrock along an irregular boundary is a bleached zone, some 14 to 18 m thick, comprising light grey to white, in situ oxidized shales and sandstones. Three samples were collected from a thick shale bed; fresh samples A and B at 18 m and 15 m depth, respectively, and a bleached shale sample C at 11 m depth. All samples were air dried, finely ground, and then passed through a wire mesh sieve with 180 μm aperture sieve. The remoulded samples were tested with the Bromhead ring shear apparatus, employing the pre-shearing test procedure with multi-stage loading. Plots of shear stress versus cumulative horizontal shear displacement under low normal stresses (