Australia's Bridges: Gladesville Bridge in New South Wales (2)

March 2011 (-33.840 deg., 151.147 deg.) Gladesville Bridge over the Parramatta River

Before I took the 'Seven Bridges Walk,' I took a ferry to photograph the bridges that cross the Parramatta River. Australia's weather is funny, with quick vicious storms that last about two minutes. I got hit by several of them standing on the deck of the ferry and photographing bridges.


The Gladesville Bridge was the longest single span arch when it was built in 1964. Its still an amazing looking bridge. With an arch length of about 1000 ft, a vertical clearance of 135 ft, and a height to depth of only 0.14, it's still a lot taller than it needs to be for the size of the ships that travel the Parramatta.


The longest concrete arch bridges are now several hundred feet longer than the Gladesville Bridge but they are much taller and less graceful. This bridge was extremely innovative, with precast arch segments supported by timber falsework while it was put together.

Australia's Bridges: Gladesville Bridge in New South Wales (2) by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.Publish Post