The Walter Taylor Bridge is a

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

suspension bridge A suspension bridge is a type of bridge in which the deck (bridge), deck is hung below suspension wire rope, cables on vertical suspenders. The first modern examples of this type of bridge were built in the early 1800s. Simple suspension bridg ...

crossing the

Brisbane River The Brisbane River (Turrbal language, Turrbal: ) is the longest river in South East Queensland, Australia. It flows through the city of Brisbane, before emptying into Moreton Bay on the Coral Sea. John Oxley, the first European to explore the ...

between

Indooroopilly Indooroopilly ( , colloquially Indro ) is a riverside suburb south-west of the Brisbane CBD, Queensland, Australia. In the , Indooroopilly had a population of 13,622 people. Geography Indooroopilly is bounded to the south and south-east by ...

and Chelmer in

Brisbane Brisbane ( ; ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and largest city of the States and territories of Australia, state of Queensland and the list of cities in Australia by population, third-most populous city in Australia, with a ...

Queensland Queensland ( , commonly abbreviated as Qld) is a States and territories of Australia, state in northeastern Australia, and is the second-largest and third-most populous state in Australia. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Austr ...

, Australia. It is shared by motor traffic and pedestrians and is the only habitable bridge in the Southern Hemisphere. It was originally known as the Indooroopilly Toll Bridge. The bridge footpath will be closed from 26 August to 30 September 2024 general maintenance.

Design

The bridge is a similar design to the Hercilio Luz Bridge in

Florianópolis Florianópolis () is the capital and second largest city of the state of Santa Catarina (state), Santa Catarina, in the South Region, Brazil, South region of Brazil. The city encompasses Santa Catarina Island and surrounding small islands, as we ...

, Brazil, with the

truss A truss is an assembly of ''members'' such as Beam (structure), 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 ...

carrying the bridge being above the roadway and meeting the cables at non-uniform heights. This means that the suspension cables form the top chord of the truss, and this configuration is known as the Steinman (after its inventor) or

type. The bridge is unique among Brisbane bridges in that the two towers of the bridge house residential accommodation, which were occupied until mid 2010 when the last members of the original tollmaster's family moved out. The Chelmer side of the bridge is bounded by a council park. A pontoon adjacent to this park was washed away in the 2011 flood, and to date has not been replaced. The Walter Taylor Bridge is one of four bridges in close proximity to each other. The others are the Albert Bridge, Indooroopilly Railway Bridge, and the Jack Pesch Bridge.

History

The bridge was conceived, designed, built and funded by local visionary Walter Taylor, a contractor who lived in Graceville (adjacent to the suburb in Chelmer). Although there was a rail bridge to Indooroopilly and beyond to the northern suburbs of Brisbane, local residents were frustrated because there was no means by which cars could cross the river. Pedestrians had been able to cross the river on the 2 previous Albert Bridges from 1875 to 1893, and from 1895 until the opening of the Walter Taylor Bridge. Construction work began in 1930. The bridge is a suspension bridge and its support cables are those that were used to hold up the incomplete halves of the

Sydney Harbour Bridge The Sydney Harbour Bridge is a steel through arch bridge in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, spanning Port Jackson, Sydney Harbour from the Sydney central business district, central business district (CBD) to the North Shore (Sydney), North ...

during its construction. When the bridge opened it had the longest span of any suspension bridge in Australia. The bridge was opened on 14 February 1936 by the Governor of

, Sir Leslie Wilson, with the final cost (anchorage to anchorage) coming to £85,000. The bridge was operated by as a toll bridge until the 1960s, with a toll collection booth located at the Northern (Indooroopilly) end (see the video link below). During that time, the bridge was known as the "Indooroopilly Toll Bridge". It was operated by Indooroopilly Toll Bridge Limited, of which Taylor was a Director and Company Secretary, listed on the

Australian Stock Exchange Australian Securities Exchange Ltd (ASX) is an Australian public company that operates Australia's primary securities exchange, the Australian Securities Exchange (sometimes referred to outside of Australia as, or confused within Australia as, ...

, and with offices in the Central Buildings, Graceville. In its first full year it made a profit of £2581. After Walter Taylor's death in 1955, the bridge was renamed the Walter Taylor Bridge in his honour in 1956.Brisbane Past and Present: Walter Taylor Bridge

Heritage listing

The bridge was listed on the

Queensland Heritage Register The Queensland Heritage Register is a heritage register, a statutory list of places in Queensland, Australia that are protected by Queensland legislation, the Queensland Heritage Act 1992. It is maintained by the Queensland Heritage Council. As ...

in 1992.

Gallery

File:Walter Taylor Bridge seen from Chelmer, Queensland 01.jpg, alt=Walter Taylor Bridge (left) adjacent to the Indooroopilly Railway Bridge., Walter Taylor Bridge (left) adjacent to the Indooroopilly Railway Bridge File:StateLibQld 1 52980 Official opening of the Indooroopilly Toll Bridge, Brisbane, 1936.jpg, alt=Official opening of the Indooroopilly Toll Bridge, Brisbane, 1936., Official opening of the Indooroopilly Toll Bridge, Brisbane, 1936, Walter Taylor (far right)

References

External links