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Hospital Creek No. 1 Bridge

Location Beside Princes Highway, East of Nowa Nowa, NOWA NOWA VIC 3887 - Property No B6947 File Number B6947 Level Demolished/Removed

Statement of Significance

The structure known as Hospital Creek No. 1 Bridge, built in 1916, is historically, socially and aesthetically significant at State level. As a tall all-timber railway bridge situated on timbered public reserve immediately beside the Princes Highway, its social significance is enhanced by its considerable aesthetic appeal.
Hospital Creek No. 1 Bridge is a sixteen-span single-track timber-trestle and timber-beam railway bridge. The spans are uniformly of twenty feet (6.1 metres): the maximum size of timber-beam span used by the Victorian Railways this century. Its builders used innovatory fastening techniques introduced by Victorian Railways Chief Engineer M E Kernot at that time, to avoid damage from spiking and to enhance bridge life.
Substantial all-timber railway bridges built to a uniform twenty-feet (6.1 metre) timber-beam-span pattern are rapidly becoming rare in Victoria. Since the replacement of Hospital Creek No. 2 Bridge by embankment and culvert some years ago, this bridge is the longest, tallest and most impressive of the very few all-timber railway bridges remaining in East Gippsland. It is the representative (and very rare) example of the timber-beam and timber-trestle railway-bridge type, in an impressive series of substantial bridges of contrasting structural types that survive along the historic Bairnsdale-Orbost Railway.
When built in 1916, it was envisaged as one essential link in a proposed railway that would not only serve the easternmost extremities of Victoria, but would pass on into New south Wales to link Melbourne with Sydney via Bombala.
The Hospital Creek No. 1 Bridge is situated in a steep-sided forested valley on roadside reserve adjacent to the busy Princes Highway, with a roadside picnic spot nearby. It combines an attractive creek-valley setting with ready public accessibility.
Classified: 19/05/1998