Historic bridges of New South Wales

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Sydney Harbour Bridge

This list documents historical bridges located in New South Wales, Australia. Road, rail and pedestrian bridges are listed. Generally bridges built before WWII (1939) have been included in this list.

Historical context

Bridge construction in New South Wales starts with the needs of the first settlers and continues through to the present day with advanced bridge design. The infant colony had limited expertise and limited materials, as time passed techniques and materials were developed that allowed greater spans to be crossed and therefore expansion of the colony into otherwise inaccessible areas.

The NSW Public Works Department was under pressure from a cash strapped government to produce as much road and bridge work for as little cost as possible. The cheapest bridge was the timber truss which could be built with local timber.

All bridges are unique, in the end the bridge that is built depends on the technology, expertise, materials and need to gain access to an area.

At the time of early settlement (1788 onwards) NSW was very isolated from the technological advances being developed in Europe and North America. Materials such as cast iron were unavailable to early colonial NSW bridge builders. NSW bridge builders had to rely on their own resourcefulness, bred of isolation, distance and the unique environment.

New South Wales's unusual environment results in unusual, and extreme river flows, almost no flow for most of the year, some flow each year and extreme floods around once a decade. Inland the cause is the low pressure system coming over the continent, due to a large high pressure of the Indian Ocean. This often occurs at summer, at which time it causes cyclone season, although it can occur at any time of year (but not inducing cyclones). At the coast, the cause is the "east coast low", which occurs at similar places at the eastern edge of a number continents, and sees the continent's normal high pressure systems becomes one large and stationary system, perhaps due to doldrums over the west coast's ocean, at which time the global trade winds deviate, inducing the low pressures at polar and tropical latitudes to connect along the east coast, producing a trough situation that mimics the tropical monsoon. An east coast low rain event can occur at any time of the year. Early settlers often replaced washed out bridges with a similarly rudimentary structure, only to see it also washed away in a heavy rain event. The government came to see that this was a major problem holding back economic development in New South Wales.

In solving these problems, colonial NSW embraced the innovations produced by others and adapted them successfully to the unique situations presented. There are examples of some very fine 19th-century bridge engineering provided for the railway expansion, conceived mainly by British engineers working in the then isolation of the Australian inland, and we have well-developed examples of many of the newer European techniques such as cable-stayed bridges.

Australia developed around coastal communities with rudimentary road systems to inland settlements. The early years saw early bridge technology limited very much to the 18th-century European technology of masonry arches and cast iron, the latter still in its infancy and not produced to any great extent in New South Wales.

NSW at the time of early settlement had an abundance of convict labour and had a need for rapid construction. In a country heavily timbered this led to basic timber structure bridges but as the Colony gained stability the government looked towards more permanent structures and, as the skills for quarrying and stone dressing became available, masonry bridges began to be designed and built. As all metal materials had to be imported, iron bridges were rarely appropriate and were in any case still too novel for colonial application. Iron bridges were only used for major crossings on important corridors.

Timber truss bridges, and timber bridges generally were so common that NSW was known to travellers as the "timber bridge state".

The following list illustrates the development of New South Wales bridge construction techniques. The list commences from the earlier constructions through to the later developments.

New South Wales historic bridges

Sorted by date

Built	Name	Location	Image	Construction type	Length	Use	In use	Comments	Ref	Coords
1833	Lennox Bridge	Glenbrook	100px	stone arch	6 metres (20 ft)	Road	Yes		see article
1836	Lansdowne Bridge	Lansvale	100px	stone arch	33.5 m	Road	Yes	largest span stone arch bridge in Australia
1839	Lennox Bridge	Parramatta	100px	stone arch	27 metres (89 ft)	Road	Yes
1858	Pyrmont Bridge	Darling Harbour	100px	Ironbark timber with steel centre swing span	369 metres (1,211 ft)	Road	Yes	one of the largest swing spans in the world at the time of its construction and it was one of the first to be powered by electricity. Now pedestrian and bicycles only
1863	Picton Viaduct	Picton	100px	stone arch		Rail	Yes	spans Stonequarry Creek
1863	Menangle Railway Bridge	Menangle				Rail	Yes		see article
1867	Victoria Bridge	Penrith		wrought iron girder		Road	Yes	also known as Nepean River Bridge	see article
1867	Knapsack Viaduct	Lapstone		stone arch		Rail (Later road)	Yes	Now pedestrian only	see article
1867	Prince Alfred Bridge	Gundagai		under-slung wrought iron Warren continuous truss & timber approaches	921 metres (3,022 ft)	Road	No	possibly oldest iron truss in NSW
1869	Zig Zag Viaducts	Clarence		Stone		Rail	Yes
1869	Farmers Creek Viaduct	Bowenfels		Stone		Rail	No
1870	Marrangaroo Creek Viaduct	Marrangaroo		Stone		Rail	No
1870	Denison Bridge	Bathurst		steel American Pratt truss		Road	Yes	Now pedestrian only	see article
1870	Mudgee Road Bridge	Wallerawang		Stone		Road	Yes (private)
1870	Coxs River Bridge	Wallerawang		Stone		Rail	No
1874	Windsor Bridge	Windsor				Road	Yes
1881	Nowra Bridge	Nowra		Steel Whipple Truss	342 metres (1,122 ft)	Road	Yes		see article
1881	Gladesville Bridge (the 1881 bridge)	Drummoyne				Road	No	Demolished when the new road bridge opened in 1964	see article
1881	Dubbo Rail Bridge	Dubbo		wrought iron lattice girder bridge		Rail	Yes
1886	Meadowbank Bridge	Meadowbank		Truss Bridge		Rail	Yes	Now bicycles and pedestrians only. New John Whitton Bridge was built to replace the original bridge in 1980.
1888	Brewarrina Bridge	Brewarrina		wrought iron lift bridge with timber beam approaches	91 metres (299 ft)	Road	Yes	Now pedestrian only
1891	Murrumbidgee River Rail	Wagga Wagga		wrought iron lattice truss		Rail	No	Removed in 2007	see article
1895	Wilcannia Bridge	Wilcannia		steel truss bridge		Road	No	Accessible to public. Used to carry Barrier Highway and spans over Darling River.
1895	Hampden Bridge	Wagga Wagga		wooden Allan Truss	100.5 metres (330 ft)	Road	Yes	Closed to public. To be demolished in 2013.	see article
1897	Victoria Bridge	Picton		wooden Allan Truss	80 metres (260 ft)	Road	Yes	tallest trestle in NSW	see article
1897	Wallaby Rocks Bridge (Turon R.)	Wallaby Rocks		Allan timber truss	106.7 metres (350 ft)	Road	Yes
1898	Hampden Bridge	Kangaroo Valley	100px	suspension with sandstone turrets		Road	Yes		see article
1901	Hinton Bridge	Hinton	100px	Allan truss	178.6 metres (586 ft)	Road	Yes
1901	De Burghs Bridge (the 1901 bridge)	West Pymble	100px			Road	No	Replaced by new road bridge in 1967. Old bridge destroyed by Bushfire in January 1994	see article
1902	Gundagai Rail Bridge	Gundagai	100px	timber Howe deck trusses	819 metres (2,687 ft)	Rail	No	over Murrumbidgee River
1903	St Albans Bridge	St Albans	100px	DeBurgh timber truss		Road	Yes
1911	Scabbing Flat Bridge	Dubbo		timber 'dare type' truss		Road	Yes
1914	Mungindi Bridge	Mungindi	100px	timber 'dare type' truss		Road	Yes	To be replaced by a new bridge which is under construction
1916	Rawsonville Bridge	Dubbo		timber 'dare type' truss		Road	Yes
1918	Fullers Bridge	Chatswood West				Road	Yes		see article
1924	Mulwala Bridge	Mulwala	100px	Steel Pratt Truss		Road	Yes		see article
1924	Roseville Bridge (the 1924 bridge)	Roseville Chase				Road	No	Replaced by new road bridge in 1966. Used as a pedestrian bridge until it was demolished in 1974.	see article
1927	Subway Lane bridge	Homebush				Rail	Yes
1929	Tom Uglys Bridge (the 1929 bridge)	Blakehurst		Truss bridge	499 metres (1,637 ft)	Road	Yes		see article
1932	Sydney Harbour Bridge	Sydney	100px	steel through arch bridge		Road	Yes		see article
1932	Grafton	Grafton		Bascule		Road (upper deck) and Rail (lower deck)	Yes		see article
1935	Ryde Bridge (the 1935 bridge)	Ryde		lift bridge		Road	Yes		see article
1939	Long Gully Bridge (Northbridge)	Northbridge	100px	concrete arch		Road	Yes	Rebuilt and replaced the 1892 bridge

Allan type truss

The Allan truss bridge is named after Percy Allan, a famous Australian engineer who designed this bridge type. His design consisted of vertical and diagonal arrangements comprising a combination of timber and iron elements. The timber elements were designed to be in compression and the iron elements in tension. Allen's design followed extensive testing of Australian hardwoods by Prof. Warren and his early engineering students at Sydney University. The timber used was mostly ironbark because of its high strength. Other features of Allan's truss design included design to minimize later maintenance and/or replacement of elements. For this reason the trusses were built in pairs to facilitate work on a particular element without requiring the whole bridge to be supported, as was the case with previous timber designs. Allan's design was very cost-effective.

The Hampden Bridge in New South Wales Australia was the first bridge to be built on Percy Allan’s design

Dare type truss

Harvey Dare was a leading engineer in the Public Works Department, and a prominent figure in early 20th century NSW. He was a designer of bridges and he developed the Dare Truss which was similar to the Allan Truss but contained improvements which make them stronger and easier to maintain. This engineering enhancement represents a significant evolution of the design of timber truss bridges, and gives Dare trusses some technical significance. Dare Trusses were the fifth of the five stages of evolution of timber truss road bridges in NSW.

In 1998 there were 27 surviving Dare trusses in NSW of the 40 built, and 82 timber truss road bridges survive from the over 400 built.