Down the Deck

Viewed from the approach, McKillops Bridge resolves into a long, straight corridor of worn timber. The deck runs 255 metres from abutment to abutment, a single lane wide at 4.5 metres, the planking marked by years of vehicle tyres into two distinct running strips. White timber handrails line each side, fitted with red reflectors that break the rhythm of the balustrading at intervals. At the far end, the road disappears into a cutting in the wooded slope above the Snowy River gorge. The bridge rests on two parallel electric-arc-welded steel Warren trusses, continuous across five reinforced-concrete A-frame piers. The timber superstructure above them is traditional stockbridge construction: transoms, two heavy longitudinal girders, transverse decking with gaps, and those running strips of six planks each. The handrails were built with runaway cattle in mind, a diamond-set top rail over four intermediate rails. The Country Roads Board built what stands here in two stages. The first bridge, contracted to Gardener Constructions of Melbourne for £11,950, was finished and never opened. On 8 January 1934, a flash flood off the Victoria and New South Wales border country lifted the superstructure off its piers and swept the wreckage downstream; part of it reached Orbost. The river rose 16 feet above any previously recorded flood height. The opening had been set for about 19 January 1934. The Board rebuilt higher, raising the piers 15 feet, filling in the open A-frames to shed flood debris, and turning the original abutments into additional piers. The replacement opened on 20 December 1935, with about 250 people present. Mrs Lind cut the ribbon; the Minister for Public Works, the Hon. G. Goudie, dedicated the bridge to George McKillop, the squatter who had brought cattle through this crossing in 1835, roughly a century before the first bolt was welded. In October 1936 the Board ran a load test: about 700 cattle held overnight on the deck, instruments attached, minimal deflection measured. Steam rollers could not reach the site. The bridge passed. Every flood since has come and gone without reaching the trusses. This photograph, taken in 2018, records the deck as it looked then: scuffed, weathered, and still carrying traffic across the Snowy River gorge in far East Gippsland.