Port River Bridges - Past, Present and Future: Port Adelaide in the Adelaide Coast region of South Australia
Ever since Col. Light nominated it as Adelaide’s port, its tidal geography and ever-increasing cargo and commercial and human traffic have demanded crossings of the swampy estuary. The first bridge to leap the main Port River channel was close to today’s Jervois Bridge, which is actually the fourth to take traffic west to the gulf. Demand arose almost from the moment sailing ships laboured upriver to Port Misery (up where West Lakes now begins), and by the 1850s people on the Le Fevre Peninsula side were shouting for action.
By 1859, they - and the mailbags coming in from via Semaphore jetty - were brought across a jarrah and stringy bark structure with a drawbridge to let boats through. Bridge No. 2 was very temporary while the cast iron Jervois Bridge was brought out from London and Newcastle in 1878. The first horse tram rattled across it and then the electrified service was installed. The tram-drivers had to go flat out because there was no electric cable across the central swing-section. The train that steamed down St Vincent St towards Semaphore crossed the bridge too until its own crossing was built.
The Jervois Bridge turntable-style swing section still opened to the ketches until the 1950s. The marine traffic was headed up to the Portland Canal that was dredged from a tidal creek that cut back towards Commercial Road through the area now “trendificated” into the Harbour Quays residential quarter. The fourth bridge is just over thirty years old, with sixteen spans and 3400 tonnes of prestressed concrete girders…it is less romantic, but more efficient.
They’ve pulled down more bridges in Pt Adelaide than they’ve left standing, and that’s because of the seawater spreading into plenty of tidal creeks and swamps off the main arm. There was even an inlet into today’s Commercial Road as it terminates past the exotic old police-station-turned-visitor centre. An 1840 wooden bridge linked the Customs House side with the South Australian Company wharf. After they had lost a bullock dray and perhaps the odd drunken sailor into the drink in the dark of a portside night, and it was slowly filled in.
With big tonnages of wheat, wool and copper to handle, the South Australian Co. needed to expand its wharf-space and so over a briny creek - in line with Todd St - went the Tam ‘o’ Shanter Bridge. The inlet was dredged and a ship basin pushed in to the swamp. Eventually, a proper swing bridge was installed to let the square-riggers through, and as even bigger ships called on Port Adelaide, the state-of-the-art Robinson swing bridge spanned the basin entrance and served for a half-century from 1883.
Past the end of the trawler and yacht lined basin is a fine run of the nineteenth century warehouses and wool stores. They used to serve the “New Dock” that was dug by hand. Another swing bridge! The Fisher Bridge was imported in bits in 1880 from Delaware via New York, and the old mast-high photographs show there were sailing-ships aplenty to let through.
The chunky concrete Birkinhead Bridge has dominated the Gawler Reach inner basin since 1940. It was a long time coming, however, as petitions for a second crossing to growing industries on the Outer Harbour side went back five decades. We watched the “Port Princess” pleasure-cruiser head for the opening bridge recommended by Adelaide’s “Mr Tramways” - MTT chief engineer William Goodman. After a US trip, he recommended a “bascule” bridge - that’s French for “see-saw”, meaning that each 360 tonne leaf or slab is counterbalanced with weights (hidden within the bases of the structure) so that they tilt upwards to allow tall ships through without too much horsepower. London’s famous Tower Bridge works in the same way. Before the Birkinhead Bridge, you had to pay the waterman to row you across or catch the little ferry.
There have been a half-dozen instances of tugs or ships missing the channel and banging into the bridge pylons, and before closed-circuit TV was installed, the mast of a ketch was clamped as the bridge closed. Falling wood nearly clobbered the skipper. But the most dangerous incident occurred back in 1944 when an eleven-year-old tried riding across as the bridge yawned open. She and her bike slid down into the pit below.
Finally, to Port bridges yet to come…since the 1950s there has been a call to get rid of the heavy traffic that makes Port Adelaide’s Black Diamond Corner anything but a jewel of a place to linger. Way back in 1960, the idea arose for a traffic tunnel downstream towards the giant wheat silos that would take the trucks. Through the 1990’s, there have been proposals for bridges across the main channel, but spans low enough for trains to stand the gradients would mean an end to river traffic like the tugs and tall ships that enhance the picturesque Gawler Reach by the Port Lighthouse and tourist wharf.
Developers have just been given the green light to design thousands of apartments and harbour side attractions to regenerate these lonely and rundown reaches. And cool and trendy riverside residents of the future will want to muck about in boats and tall yachts - and watch the traditional marine traffic go by. And so it has come to pass that two bridges will soon fly over the seawater just north of the Victorian era Birkinhead Tavern, and both rail and roadways will open to let the river trade through. Stage One - bringing the expressway in from the east - is underway, but the Stage Two bridges are still hard to pin down (where they will land precisely, for instance) and so the saga is far from over for Port Adelaide’s bridges.
References (with thanks):
Spanning Time and Tide
The Bridges of the Port Adelaide River
Ron Ritter, 1996 (published by the author)A Study of Construction and Purposes of the Port Adelaide Bridges
John Kerins, Matriculation Geography project
Largs Bay, 1976Port River Expressway and Bridges Information
Transport SA
Infoline 1300 130 653
Brochures from Transport SA Manager, Communications
Mrs Marcia Hewitt
ph: 8343 2164
fax: 8343 2005
email: marcia.hewitt@transport.sa.gov.au
web: www.transport.sa.gov.au/portriverexpressway/Port Adelaide Tourist Information
Port Adelaide Visitor Information Centre
66 Commercial Road
Port Adelaide.
Open daily 9am-5pm
ph: (08) 8405 6560
web: www.portenf.sa.gov.au
