History how the Story Bridge was built

The heritage-listed Story Bridge has held the Brisbane together for almost 80 years and is a reminder of how far we have come, writes Grantlee Kieza.

AS THE Queensland governor cut a red ribbon to finally declare the Story Bridge open, 37,000 people holding special tickets behind him anxiously shuffled their feet. They were in a hurry to get moving as the first members of the Brisbane public to officially cross the almost kilometre of bitumen linking Fortitude Valley with Kangaroo Point.

The governor, Sir Leslie Orme Wilson, was moved, too, stating at the opening on July 6, 1940, that the magnificent structure — 12,000 tonnes of steel that would carry traffic 30m above the Brisbane River — could rival any of the world’s great engineering feats. It was proof, he said, that Queenslanders could achieve anything.

From Petrie Bight on the river, and from vantage points along Bowen Terrace in New Farm, crowds marvelled at this concrete and steel giant stretched out before them, as magnificent as any bridge in Sydney or San Francisco.

Story Bridge to undergo 5-year renovation

The bridge’s design was based on the Jacques Cartier Bridge in Montreal.

The bridge, now about to undergo a Brisbane City Council repaint, was named after John Douglas Story, the Brisbane public servant who was one of the drivers for its construction.

It was the final masterpiece conceived in the extraordinary mind of Sandgate-born John Bradfield, the man who was also behind the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Sydney’s underground rail network, and who did much to help the construction of the University of Queensland’s St Lucia site and the Hornibrook Highway, linking the Redcliffe Peninsula with Brisbane.

The bridge had been mooted for more than sixty years before construction started.

Talk of a bridge over Petrie Bight had started at least as early as 1865. It gained momentum in the mid-1920s, and accelerated in 1929 as the Great Depression began to strangle the global economy, and put thousands of Queenslanders into unemployment.

Great public works had the potential to create thousands of jobs and to boost the state’s morale.

In June 1934, Queensland adopted Bradfield’s recommendation for a steel cantilever bridge based on Montreal’s new Jacques Cartier Bridge, and in April 1935, a consortium of two Queensland companies, Evans Deakin and Hornibrook Constructions, won the tender. Construction began on May 24, 1935.

The Story Bridge under construction in 1938.

Premier William Forgan Smith said that the bridge was likely to give work directly to 600 men for four years, and that at least 1000 jobs would be created when materials, transport and incidentals were taken into account.

The steel was fabricated in the purpose-built Rocklea workshop of Evans Deakin, where work sometimes continued 24 hours a day. There were 1.25 million rivets, and the concrete work and erection of the superstructure was carried out on site by the M.R. Hornibrook organisation. Three men died in falls during construction, and 65 were treated for the bends from working in pressurised watertight compartments on the southern foundations 40m below ground.

The construction of the Story Bridge created at least 1000 jobs during the Great Depression.

Bradfield described the bridge as having “bold towers and broad shoulders linking the shore and river arms’’. Whether viewed nearby or from afar, he said, the bridge expressed “simplicity, strength, grace”.

The great engineer was born on Boxing Day 1867 at Sandgate, the son of an English labourer who had fought in the Crimean War. In later life he recounted how “I learned my alphabet and to count at the Infants’ School North Ipswich. I continued at the Boys’ School until I won a state school scholarship in 1880’’.

The Story Bridge towered over the rest of the city at the time of its construction.

He was dux at Ipswich Grammar before winning the University of Sydney Gold Medal in 1889. He was in retirement when the Queensland government first approached him in 1932.

The Story Bridge was opened just months after Australia entered World War II, and the next day, toll collectors were dealing with 20 cars per minute in both directions (28,800 a day). Now, almost 100,000 cars every day cross the Bradfield Highway — the name of the Story Bridge’s roadway.

Since 2005, intrepid souls have also been tackling the climb to the top of the bridge’s 80m summit. There they can gasp in awe at the breathtaking view from the top of a structure that took Brisbane to new heights.