SHE’S 80 years old and all of Sydney is celebrating. Honestly, I
don’t know if bridges have a gender at all, much less female, but the
Germans think bridges are girls, so I’ll go with that.
Yesterday, March 19, was the 80th anniversary of the much talkedabout
1932 ribbon cutting that officially opened the Sydney Harbour
Bridge. Poor Premier Jack Lang was upstaged by a mounted rightwing
zealot with a sword and the rest, as is so often said, is history.
In those 80 years, the bridge has become as much a part of the
harbour itself as the Opera House and Luna Park fascia. At least once
every year she bursts into glorious splendour with fireworks to
rapturous adulation. For the last decade it has been possible to
(legally) scale her girders and stand triumphantly on her pinnacle.
She has embraced Sydney as much as Sydney, and her millions of
visitors, has embraced her.
It’s hard to imagine that the many magazines and websites that
voted Sydney the world’s favourite cruise destination would have
done so without the omnipresent bridge as our crowning glory.
There she is, like a 40,000 tonne tiara, welcoming every ship as they
make their way into Circular Quay or, more recently, beyond to
Darling Harbour. Coincidently, her total weight of 53,800 tonnes was
almost the same as many of the largest ships afloat at the time such
as the massive 286m, 51,656 GT SS Bremen of Norddeutscher Lloyd.
But ships quickly became larger to the point where today’s largest
(such as the 53m high Carnival Spirit and QM2) will no longer fit under
her span. ‘Enough’ she declares, ‘I am queen of this city!’
Queen she may be, presiding over numerous historic events
including the terrifying Japanese submarine attack of 1942 and the
drawn-out, slow motion construction of her architectural counterpart,
the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Opera House. Jørn Utzon’s
masterpiece in fact took five years longer to build than the bridge.
14,000 workers toiled for eight years hammering in 6 million rivets
with 16 falling to their deaths The only one to survive was Irishman,
Vincent Kelly, who landed feet first with his hands protecting his
head although the urban legend has him dropping his tool belt/
spanner/hammer to “break” his fall. He was back at work after six
weeks of recovery.
For 60 years she bore the entire cross harbour traffic, including
trains, until relieved by the tunnel in 1992, at which time she carried
182,000 vehicles every day. Initial toll was sixpence for a car and it is
now as much as $4, depending on the time of day, despite the
AU£6.25 million cost being fully recouped in 1988.
It is also no surprise that the world’s most prestigious cruise lines
feature images of their illustrious vessels posing in front of the
monumental structure, arrogantly presuming to add something to
this already impressive vista.
While she effectively bars access to the western reaches of the
harbour by the largest liners, she will continue to reign supreme over
all she surveys to the east, imperiously denying passage to those
vessels impertinent enough to challenge her grandeur. Long may
she span!
