Rex Gardner: Hobart’s new Remembrance bridge divides opinion

THE bridge under construction across the Tasman Highway from the Queens Domain to the Cenotaph will be opened on November 11, but not all are happy with it.

Bridge of Remembrance under construction over the Tasman Highway at the Domain. Picture: SAM ROSEWARNE

IT is an elegant, twisting plane growing from the ground and leaping over the main road entering Hobart, providing a distinctive entry portal to the city.

This is how the architects describe the bridge under construction across the Tasman Highway from the Queens Domain to the Cenotaph.

Five years after it was first mooted in the Queens Domain Master Plan, the bridge — which still doesn’t seem to have a name that sticks so let’s for the moment call it The Nipaluna Gateway — has become a major issue.

The penny has finally dropped.

This is no insignificant and unobtrusive pedestrian/cycleway. It is a major piece of infrastructure plonked across one of the city’s most beautiful vistas as you slide gently downhill entering the Sullivans Cove precinct.

Some say it looks like a Stealth bomber straddling the highway. The architect’s sketches depict it as a fine arrow shooting across the road from the Domain parkland.

The not-so-kind among us call our new bridge a blot on the landscape. Someone even described it as the underside of Battlestar Galactica.

Other detractors have called it “ugly and ill-conceived”, “short-sighted wasteful expenditure” and of “monolithic character”.

The striking $11 million bridge has been designed by Denton Corker Marshall, one of Australia’s foremost architectural firms. Denton Corker Marshall has some of the country’s most significant bridges and infrastructure projects under its belt.

The ultra-modern angular design of the Hobart bridge will slice through the otherwise undulating, verdant landscape. It will be illuminated at night and should look startling.

And if it is like other DCM pedestrian walkways, it will have many other features that may surprise.

Whatever you think, the 200m-long bridge is rapidly taking shape and will be officially opened this Remembrance Day, seamlessly linking, at last, the parkland with the waterfront, but more significantly from a remembrance aspect, the Soldiers Memorial Avenue with the Cenotaph.

But the landmark bridge, which hopefully we will grow to like as it makes sense as a pedestrian and cycleway connection with the underutilised parkland, seems to have snuck up on many residents like a few other well-known landmarks that have become features of Hobart over the years.

While some proposals still on the drawing board, such as the Mt Wellington cable car, polarise the city and cause outrage, the naysayers have been caught napping on the new bridge.

This development apathy is most unusual in this city, but cast your mind back to the appearance of Zero Davey opposite the Grand Chancellor Hotel, which many people feel destroyed the gateway to Sullivans Cove. Its appearance seemed to surprise many, but it was too late to bellyache.

It didn’t help this entrance to the iconic dock area when the copper-clad Concert Hall across the road — which replicated the site’s old gasometer — had its construction compromised by cost constraints and has never oxidised to the planned green tarnish.

Instead, the insulation hangs out of the thin copper cladding, as a sad symbol of cost cutting decisions of the day, and subsequent inability over many years to hire a cherry-picker to stuff it back out of sight.

And the 130m concrete telecommunications needle on top of Mount Wellington, complete with surrounding buildings, popped up without much protest back in the late 1990s, dominating the mountain from most angles far more that a cable car ever will.

Few people would argue the needle doesn’t look better than the television tower it replaced, fondly known as the Condom Tower, as it was sheathed in white material to protect the technology within from the alpine elements.

So to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, Hobart’s newest bridge will open to the public on November 11, whether residents like it or not.

The architect’s website still refers to the bridge as the Tasman Highway Memorial Bridge.

The name Legacy Link was selected after a popular vote, but was overturned.

The City of Hobart is now referring to it as the Bridge of Remembrance. It has previously been referred to as Peace Bridge and Legacy Walk.

A recent council advertisement advising the public of traffic disruptions referred to it as “a new, all-abilities pedestrian and bicycle bridge over the Tasman Highway”.

No name was offered.

The new bridge will really make its mark on the city from 7pm Friday, October 12, until 6am Monday, October 15.

This is when the Tasman Highway from the Brooker to the Tasman Bridge will be closed to all traffic, guaranteeing traffic snarls and much angst as traffic is diverted around the Queens Domain.

Let’s just hope a ship doesn’t pass under the Tasman Bridge that weekend, stopping all traffic crossing the bridge. That could be too much to bear.

Rex Gardner is a former chief executive of the Mercury.