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Fergusons Bridge
Campaspe River crossing, Bendigo-Murchison Road, approx. 4 km east of Midland Highway,, GOORNONG VIC 3557 - Property No B7033
Fergusons Bridge
Campaspe River crossing, Bendigo-Murchison Road, approx. 4 km east of Midland Highway,, GOORNONG VIC 3557 - Property No B7033
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Statement of Significance
Ferguson's Bridge is scientifically and historically significant at State level for its superelevated timber deck and curved plan, signifying the transition from horse-drawn to motor vehicle traffic.
Technically, this timber and steel road-over-river bridge is extremely unusual in being one of only three known extant Victorian examples of a large curved and super-elevated timber-decked road bridge featuring rolled steel joists in its superstructure. It is the earliest extant example of the type, and probably the first of its kind to be built in Victoria. Very few similar curved and super-elevated composite road bridges with timber decks appear ever to have existed in this State. When constructed by the Country Roads Board in 1939 it incorporated the most up-to-date engineering theory, the technique of super-elevating road curves having been developed in Victoria during the mid-1930s to cater for the faster automobiles then becoming common on our main roads. The use of this technique to overcome problems associated with acutely-angled road approaches to bridge sites that had originally been developed for slow-moving horse-drawn vehicles, was still novel in Victoria in 1939.
Historically, Fergusons Bridge occupies an historic Campaspe River crossing place adjacent to the Pre-emptive Right (homestead site) of what was Robertson's 'Campaspie River' squatting run in the earliest days of white settlement. In 1939 the current structure replaced an earlier all-timber low-level river bridge that was named Fergusons Bridge, after an early selector upon whose property it encroached. That earlier Fergusons Bridge had replaced a pioneers' ford that had functioned from the earliest days of white settlement until 1881.
The current Fergusons Bridge is a very rare curved-deck timber and steel road-over-river bridge, representing a post-Depression/pre-World War 2 era of Victorian transport history when the rapidly increasing numbers of faster-moving automobiles forced road authorities to abandon traditional horse-era bridge designs, often aligned at right angles to the stream and involving a sharp change of direction at the point where cars moved onto the bridge deck.
Classified: 08/11/1999
Technically, this timber and steel road-over-river bridge is extremely unusual in being one of only three known extant Victorian examples of a large curved and super-elevated timber-decked road bridge featuring rolled steel joists in its superstructure. It is the earliest extant example of the type, and probably the first of its kind to be built in Victoria. Very few similar curved and super-elevated composite road bridges with timber decks appear ever to have existed in this State. When constructed by the Country Roads Board in 1939 it incorporated the most up-to-date engineering theory, the technique of super-elevating road curves having been developed in Victoria during the mid-1930s to cater for the faster automobiles then becoming common on our main roads. The use of this technique to overcome problems associated with acutely-angled road approaches to bridge sites that had originally been developed for slow-moving horse-drawn vehicles, was still novel in Victoria in 1939.
Historically, Fergusons Bridge occupies an historic Campaspe River crossing place adjacent to the Pre-emptive Right (homestead site) of what was Robertson's 'Campaspie River' squatting run in the earliest days of white settlement. In 1939 the current structure replaced an earlier all-timber low-level river bridge that was named Fergusons Bridge, after an early selector upon whose property it encroached. That earlier Fergusons Bridge had replaced a pioneers' ford that had functioned from the earliest days of white settlement until 1881.
The current Fergusons Bridge is a very rare curved-deck timber and steel road-over-river bridge, representing a post-Depression/pre-World War 2 era of Victorian transport history when the rapidly increasing numbers of faster-moving automobiles forced road authorities to abandon traditional horse-era bridge designs, often aligned at right angles to the stream and involving a sharp change of direction at the point where cars moved onto the bridge deck.
Classified: 08/11/1999
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FERGUSONS BRIDGEVictorian Heritage Register H1853
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Fergusons BridgeNational Trust H1853
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