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01 McKillops BridgeDeddick Valley2018
ISO 1101/200 secf/8.0180mm
Series · 7 prints
Map · Mapbox · OpenStreetMap
McKillops Bridge carries a single lane across the Snowy River in East Gippsland's Deddick Valley, 255 metres of timber decking on electric-arc-welded steel trusses and five tall concrete piers. The Country Roads Board built it in two attempts between 1931 and 1935. The first bridge was torn off its piers by a flash flood in January 1934, days before its planned opening. The replacement, set 15 feet higher, opened 20 December 1935 and has stood through every flood since.
The crossing at the site the drovers called Turnback had carried stock down from the Monaro since before colonial settlement. From 1889, a Scottish-born ferryman named Duncan McKellar ran a government-subsidised punt there at £75 a year; the place was known as McKellar's Crossing. In 1928 the Country Roads Board moved toward a high-level bridge after recognising that the flash floods generated by Monaro thunderstorms would make a low-level structure unworkable. The contract for the first bridge went to Gardener Constructions of Melbourne for £11,950. The trusses were electric-arc-welded steel, a then-novel method that cut the steel mass from 160 to 120 tons and brought the cost well below the CRB's original estimate of £28,500.
The first bridge was finished but never opened. On 8 January 1934, a flood that rose 16 feet above any previously recorded height piled debris against the trusses and tore the superstructure clean off its piers; the centre pier came down with it, and part of the wreck reached Orbost. The CRB rebuilt immediately, raising the piers 15 feet, filling in the open A-frames to shed debris, and turning the original abutments into additional piers. The replacement opened on 20 December 1935, with about 250 people present. The bridge takes its name from George McKillop, who brought cattle across the Snowy here in 1835 on the stock route from the Monaro toward the Omeo plains; a crossing that had served stockmen long before it carried a road.
Hand-signed and numbered, printed from the original RAW file. Open editions in the two smallest sizes; limited editions of 100, 50 and 25 in the three larger, never reissued once they sell through.
Made to order by Brett in Sydney, from the original RAW file. Each print is hand-signed and numbered before it ships.
Paper
Ilford Galerie cotton rag, 310 gsm. Acrylic on metallic gloss, 260 gsm.
Lead time
Unframed: 5 to 10 business days. Framed and acrylic: 10 to 20.
Opening invitations had already gone out when the January 1934 flood hit. The river rose 16 feet above any previously recorded height, piled debris against the trusses for half a kilometre upstream, and tore the superstructure clean off its piers. Part of the wreck was found at Orbost, 144 kilometres downstream. The CRB started rebuilding almost immediately, raising the piers 15 feet and filling in the open A-frames to shed debris rather than catch it.
When the rebuilt bridge was ready for its first crossing in November 1935, the honour fell to a Mr Hayden, the same man who had ridden first across the original, doomed bridge, and he crossed on the same horse. It is the kind of detail that ends up in the local paper and then lodges in the record for ninety years.
The engineering challenge did not end at the bridge. The western approach on McKillops Road, about 25 kilometres of unsealed, narrow, steep gravel from Gelantipy, is described in the 2019 Engineers Australia nomination as "regarded by many as the most dangerous section of road in Australia". Unsuitable for caravans and articulated trucks, it was still being shaped by the CRB into 1936, a year after the bridge itself had opened.
