Back to search results »

Back to search page »

Auer's Entry Road Bridge

Location 2742 McKillops Road, TUBBUT VIC 3888 - Property No B6844 File Number B6844 Level State

[1/3] B6844 Auers Bridge deck [2/3] B6844 Auers Bridge [3/3] B6844 Auers Bridge

Statement of Significance

Auer's entry-road bridge, built circa 1936, is historically significant at the State level. This two-span timber-beam single-lane bridge consists of low concrete abutments, a low central pier of natural rock and concrete, three log stringers per span, simple transverse timber decking spiked directly to stringers without 'spiking planks' or 'running planks', and squared-timber kerbs. It is a low-level structure, designed for flood debris to pass harmlessly over its deck. This is a rare surviving authentic and representative example of that once-characteristic feature of remote rural Gippsland, an Isolated Settler Road bridge designed and built by the Country Roads Board.
The Isolated Settler road was a specific category of rural road that drew State funding through the Country Roads Board, in the between-wars period. Such roads were usually short, and designed to link particular farms with a nearby developmental or main road: in this case the famous Bonang-Gelantipy (McKillops Road) created during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Because it was designed to service a specific farm, such a road could not justify large State funding, and economy was paramount. Any bridge constructed on such a road had to be of Spartan simplicity. Hence, the best surviving examples of 'primitive' low-level timber bridges of colonial type were built in the 1930s for Isolated Settler Roads.
This bridge's importance is enhanced by its setting along 'McKillop's Track' near other historic CRB structures of the Great Depression era, particularly the Ambyne Suspension Bridge and McKillops Bridge. These bridges were designed to facilitate opening up the wider Tubbut area for pastoral use, in an unusual State experiment designed to be repeated elsewhere.
It is difficult to identify specific exmaples of the Isolated Settler bridge today, but there is a strong local tradition that this is an authentic example from circa 1936, once part of a group of similar bridges. This tradition is backed by photographic evidence of the opening of the bridge. It preserves key features of this simplest form of CRB transverse-decked timber road-bridge structure of the 1930s, in a very authentic way. This little bridge also enjoys an unusually picturesque setting in the remote Deddick River valley.