The Junction Bridge is a

heritage-listed This list is of heritage registers, inventories of cultural properties, natural and man-made, tangible and intangible, movable and immovable, that are deemed to be of sufficient heritage value to be separately identified and recorded. In many ...

road bridge A bridge is a structure built to span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or rail) without blocking the way underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, which is usually somethi ...

that carries the Tumut Plains Road across the Tumut River, from

Tumut Tumut () is a town in the Riverina region of New South Wales, Australia, situated on the banks of the Tumut River. Tumut sits on the north-west foothills of the Snowy Mountains and is located on the traditional lands of the Wiradjuri, Wolgalu ...

to Tumut Plains in

New South Wales ) , nickname = , image_map = New South Wales in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of New South Wales in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , es ...

, Australia. The bridge is owned by

Transport for NSW Transport for NSW, sometimes abbreviated to TfNSW, and pronounced as Transport for New South Wales, is an agency of the New South Wales Government established on 1 November 2011, and is the leading transport and roads agency in New South Wales, ...

. It was added to the

New South Wales State Heritage Register The New South Wales State Heritage Register, also known as NSW State Heritage Register, is a heritage list of places in the state of New South Wales, Australia, that are protected by New South Wales legislation, generally covered by the Heritag ...

on 20 June 2000.

History

Annual

Public Works Public works are a broad category of infrastructure projects, financed and constructed by the government, for recreational, employment, and health and safety uses in the greater community. They include public buildings ( municipal buildings, sc ...

reports suggest that work on the bridge commenced in 1893, and was completed by June 1895. According to the plans for the bridge, this structure replaced an older bridge which had been located immediately south (upstream) of the new bridge. The bridge was named the Shelley Bridge after the wife of Mr. George Shelley, one of the first settlers of Tumut, arriving in 1832. the name Shelley Bridge appears to have dropped out of use until the late 1950s when E. H. Shelley, a grandson of Mrs. Shelley, requested that: 'The name of our late grandmother should be honoured by having the bridge officially recorded as the Shelley Bridge, in accordance with the wishes of the relatives as indicated at the opening. At the time of this request there appears to have been no record of the bridge being named Shelley, but it was listed by the Public Works Department as the Junction Bridge over the Tumut River at Shelley's. However, Mr Shelley's request was complied with and action was taken to have signs erected at the bridge, naming it as Shelley's Bridge.RTA file 439.61 Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA) maintenance records for the Junction Bridge commenced in 1932, although notes from that year mention previous maintenance works carried out by the NSW Department of Public Works.

Description

The Bridge consists of four timber girder approach spans and three McDonald

truss A truss is an assembly of ''members'' such as beams, connected by ''nodes'', that creates a rigid structure. In engineering, a truss is a structure that "consists of two-force members only, where the members are organized so that the assembl ...

spans. The bridge has a road width of between kerbs, accommodating a single lane of traffic. The original bridge plans show four timber girder spans on the Tumut side and no approach span on the other. However, it is nowhere stated in the records whether the Tumut end was built with three spans or whether one span was later removed. The approach span on the Punt Bridge (or eastern) side was added around 1975 due to scour of the river bank which is on the outside of a bend in the river.

Heritage listing

As at 13 September 2005, Junction Bridge is one of five McDonald trusses remaining in NSW to date (one of which is no longer used by road traffic), and of these, it is ranked second in terms of its heritage significance.MBK 1999: 90 The bridge is readily accessible from

Sydney Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountain ...

and the nearby alpine areas and is situated in an idyllic rural setting over the Tumut River. The bridge is the only existing triple span arrangement of the McDonals truss, a seminal bridge type designed by a prominent local engineer who was part of an important influential group of NSW Public Works Department Engineers, including

Percy Allan Percy Allan (12 July 1861 – 7 May 1930) was a civil engineer who designed many public works in New South Wales, including the design of 583 bridges. Early life Allan was the son of Maxwell Rennie Allan, principal Under-Secretary of State f ...

, Harvey Dare,

Ernest de Burgh Ernest Macartney de Burgh (; ; 18 January 1863 – 3 April 1929) was an Irish-born Australian civil engineer, chief-engineer for water supply and sewerage in New South Wales. Early life De Burgh was the youngest son of the Rev. William de Burg ...

and John Bradfield. Junction Bridge was designed to make full use of Australian native hardwoods as structural members and forms part of a group of bridge types that combine to illustrate the evolution of timber truss bridge design in Australia. Collectively, these revolutionized the ability of the government to provide trafficable roads around NSW in the late nineteenth century. While the Bridge as a whole has been assessed as fulfilling the criteria for listing on the SHR, the various elements that comprise the bridge are of varying levels of significance: abutments, approach spans and barrier railing are of moderate significance, the deck is of high significance, and the truss spans and cross girders are of exceptional significance. The Junction Bridge was listed on the

on 20 June 2000.

References

Bibliography

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Attribution