National Estate Register:

McMillans Bridge is situated on the Little Woady Yalloack River crossing of the Rokewood-Skipton Road 6

kilometres north west of Rokewood. It was originally built in 1856 by the Central Road Board to the design of

Charles Rowland, and incorporates 1888-9 modifications by the Shires of Leigh and Grenville to the design of

Charles A.C. Wilson. It comprises two double-intersection wrought-iron deck-trusses which in 1889 wereseated upon 1856 red sandstone abutments (originally constructed for a timber truss superstructure). The

longitudinal timber deck is supported by timber cross beams laid across the tops of the iron trusses. The 29

metre single span wrought-iron lattice-girder trusses, connected by iron cross bracing, are of unusually light

construction. The original deck width of 6.1 metres has been widened to 7.3 metres. The single-layer

longitudinal timber deck is currently unsurfaced. It now has armco rails. The broad road reserve and open

grassland terrain allow easy observation of the bridge's impressive stone-masonry and iron work.

Condition and Integrity: Not Available

Source: Victorian Heritage Register -

Additional Information Comparisons: In terms of over-all age, there are very few bridges of any type in Victoria

for which any substantial part of the current structure can be positively dated to the 1850s. The 8.1 metre

single-span bluestone masonry arch bridge over Youl Creek at Woolsthorpe, built by the Belfast Road Board

in 1856, is generally regarded as Victoria's oldest surviving bridge. Other surviving 1850s bridges all date from

1859 and include the six-span sandstone masonry arch bridge over Hughes Creek at Avenel, the five-span

bluestone masonry arch bridge at Batesford and the single-span sandstone masonry arch bridge over

Djerriwah Creek near Bacchus Marsh. The finely crafted red-sandstone masonry abutments which first carried

goldfields traffic in 1856, are a substantial part of the present McMillan's Bridge and they rate among Victoria's

very oldest surviving bridge artifacts of any sort.

McMillan's Bridge in its present (post-1889) form is one in an impressive series of colonial Victorian wroughtiron

lattice-girder deck-truss road bridges. When built in 1888-9 it represented a significant evolution in bridge

design which drew upon the latest engineering theory and the scientific testing facilities of the University of

Melbourne to achieve maximum load-bearing capacity and durability in a lengthy single span, using a minimal

quantity of imported iron materials. The lightness of the intelligently engineered wrought-iron trusses also

made construction relatively simple and therefore economical, especially when used in conjunction with

massive pre-existing sandstone abutments. McMillan's Bridge is also very unusual among its kind, in that it

remains in service today.

The 1871 Glenmona Bridge over the Bet Bet Creek at Bung Bong was the first of several locally-produced

Victorian wrought-iron lattice-girder road bridges to be constructed to a deck-truss design for rural crossing

places on major roads. This new type of wrought-iron lattice-girder road bridge was designed specifically in

response to the disastrous state-wide floods of 1870, which devastated many of the colony's big timber river

bridges and led to government flood subsidies for many affected municipalities. When built, in 1871,

Glenmona Bridge was rated amongst the most expensive bridges constructed in rural Victoria, the cost being

twice that of McMillan's Bridge in 1889 (although the latter bridge used pre-existing masonry abutments, and

was considerably shorter).

Several other colonial Victorian bridges combine stone-masonry substructures with wrought-iron girders of a

different type, and timber decks. Among the best known are Shelford Bridge from 1874, and Keilor Bridge built

in 1868, both of which use wrought-iron box-girders in conjunction with stone substructures and timber tops, at

what were once major rural road crossings. The smaller 1870 Hotspur Bridge, in the old Shire of Portland,

used a simpler through-truss rivetted-plate-girder construction with stone-masonry abutments and a timber

deck, to create a very different visual effect.

The Redesdale (or Mia Mia) Bridge of 1868 stands out from all other Victorian stone-masonry, iron and timbertopped

colonial bridges for several reasons. It was constructed earlier than the other rural lattice-girder truss

bridges, all of which were built with benefit of hindsight into the devastating potential of freak floodwaters that

had been unleashed across Victoria in 1870. Timber generally reigned in Victorian rural road-bridge

construction prior to 1870, except at a few very difficult stream crossings on major roads where masonry-arch

bridges had provided the only practicable solution (for example, Hughes Creek, Sydney Road, Avenel, late

1850s). The actual manufacture of the Redesdale Bridge iron trusses goes back to Britain of the 1850s, where

they had been constructed to be used in a deck-truss design as at Hawthorn Bridge, for which site they were

originally intended.

The Redesdale Bridge is the oldest and most visually impressive of a small series of rural Victorian wroughtiron

lattice-girder bridges built in the colonial era, and mainly congregated in our Central Goldfields region. It is

an oddity in such a rural situation, its iron-truss materials having been imported in 1859 to bridge a major

urban river crossing at Hawthorn. The divided-lane through-truss design at Mia Mia, linked and stabilised by

unusual overhead iron arches, was created for this specific difficult Campaspe-crossing site and is unique. Its

tall imported wrought-iron through trusses were massively heavy and very expensive when compared to thelocally-manufactured and cleverly engineered light-weight wrought-iron trusses produced in Geelong for use

on McMillan's Bridge in 1888-9.

Jorgensen's Bridge near Clunes dates from 1874 and is a similar type of structure to Glenmona Bridge,

utilising continuous wrought-iron lattice-girder deck trusses on stone-masonry abutments and piers. Cressy

Bridge which dates from 1880 is larger, with significantly longer spans. It is unlike the earlier lattice-truss

bridges in having a buckle-plate deck on iron cross beams. The second Government Bridge over Creswick

Creek at Clunes was built in 1896 on stone-masonry abutments previously associated with a laminated timber

arch structure. It also used wrought-iron lattice-girder trusses, twenty-two metres in length, in a deck-truss

design. Built on the much earlier stone foundations of an original laminated-timber-arch bridge, it has itself

since been replaced except for the historic masonry abutments.

In terms of its wrought-iron lattice-truss technology, McMillan's Bridge built near Rokewood in 1889 by a

Geelong contractor was a very advanced light-weight and efficient bridge design for its era, created by an

unusually skilled and adventurous shire engineer who drew upon the resources of the Engineering Department

of the University of Melbourne headed by Professor W. C. Kernot. In this case, a large single-span road-bridge

superstructure was supported by only 30 tons 11 cwt of imported wrought-iron, incorporated into an unusually

light-weight deck-truss design for that era. Such economical and efficient wrought-iron bridge construction was

only made possible by the up-to-date theoretical and scientific-testing input of Professor W. C. Kernot's

university department. Kernot was at that stage beginning to have a little success in what had been a longstanding

struggle to convince 'practical' engineers of the old school that 'abstract' scientific theory could make

a major contribution to the development of an efficient Victorian infrastructure.