Approach and Sign

The road approach to McKillops Bridge offers the clearest measure of what the Country Roads Board achieved here. A single lane of timber decking, 255 metres of it, runs out across the Snowy River on welded steel Warren trusses carried by five reinforced-concrete A-frame piers. A black and white chevron sign at the entry is the only signal that anything significant is ahead. Forested hills rise on both banks, and the sky above the gorge holds cloud. The crossing at this point on the Snowy had been worked by a punt since 1889, when the Victorian Government funded the service and employed a Scottish-born ferryman named Duncan McKellar at £75 a year. The site became known as McKellar's Crossing. The bridge itself takes a different name: George McKillop, who brought cattle through here in 1835 on the stock route down from the Monaro toward the Omeo plains. The Country Roads Board first proposed a crossing in 1928. A low-level design was set aside once flash floods were recognised as the governing risk, and a high-level structure was chosen. The contract was let to Gardener Constructions of Melbourne in 1931 for £11,950. The first bridge was completed but never opened. On 8 January 1934, a flash flood lifted the structure off its piers and carried the superstructure downstream; part of the wreck reached Orbost. The river was reported 16 feet above any previously recorded height. The CRB rebuilt. The piers were raised 15 feet, the open A-frames filled in to shed debris, the original abutments turned into additional piers, the trusses cantilevered back to the higher approaches. The replacement opened on 20 December 1935, with about 250 people present. A contemporary press report put the cost of the replacement at about £12,000. The bridge was listed on the Victorian Heritage Register as H1849 and received an Engineering Heritage Marker from Engineers Australia in November 2019. It has stood through every flood since 1935 without damage, none reaching the height of the trusses. This photograph was made in 2018.