Anzac Bridge

Listen first. Under the hum of traffic there is a softer sound, a steady thrum that runs through the deck when trucks pass. Look up and you see the cables. They rise in two great fans from the towers and hold the roadway in the air above the water. On a windy day you can feel the bridge breathing slightly underfoot. It is a living structure, made of concrete and steel, that moves a little with every load it carries.

You are standing on Anzac Bridge. It crosses Johnstons Bay, an inlet of Sydney Harbour, and it links the inner suburb of Pyrmont and the old industrial land of Glebe Island with Rozelle to the west. Every day, many thousands of cars and buses pour across these lanes between the city centre and the inner west. Most of the people in those cars never slow down. On foot, you see a very different bridge.

This is a cable-stayed bridge. That phrase is worth a moment. In a suspension bridge, like the Golden Gate in San Francisco, huge main cables hang between towers, and smaller cables drop down to the road. Here, there is no main cable. Each cable runs straight from a tower to the deck, like the strings of a harp. The towers carry the load directly. It is a cleaner, more modern design, and you can trace every line with your eye.

The main span between the two towers is about 345 metres, and when the bridge opened it was among the longest cable-stayed spans in the world. It is still the longest of its kind in Australia. The towers are concrete, and they rise well over a hundred metres above the water. From a distance their shape is simple and pale. Up close, you notice the scale, and how small a person feels beside them.

The bridge opened in December 1995, but it did not carry this name at first. It was called the Glebe Island Bridge, after the land at its eastern end. Then, on Remembrance Day in 1998, it was renamed Anzac Bridge. The name honours the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, known as the ANZACs. These were the soldiers who landed at Gallipoli in Turkey in 1915, during the First World War. For Australians and New Zealanders, that campaign still carries deep meaning.

Here is a detail many visitors miss. The renaming was not just a new sign. Look at the tops of the towers. An Australian flag and a New Zealand flag fly there, high above the traffic. They are large, but at that height they look small, and many drivers pass beneath them every day without ever looking up. Once you know they are there, you will spot them from all over the inner harbour.

Now look towards the western approach. There stands a bronze statue of an Australian soldier, a figure often called a digger, which is the Australian nickname for a soldier. He holds his rifle reversed, the traditional pose of mourning. A statue of a New Zealand soldier was added later, so that both nations now have a figure on the bridge. It is a quiet, solemn note in the middle of a busy road.

Before this bridge, there was another one here. An older Glebe Island Bridge opened in the early twentieth century. It was a swing bridge. A section of the deck turned sideways on a pivot so that ships could pass up the bay. For decades, drivers waited while it swung open and closed. As traffic grew, the delays became a real problem, and a high fixed bridge was the answer. The old swing bridge still survives nearby, though it no longer carries traffic.

That height is the second surprise. Because the deck is so high, tall ships can pass underneath without anything needing to open. The old industrial waterway kept working while the road above never stopped. Look down at the water and imagine the past here. Glebe Island was once home to large abattoirs in the nineteenth century, and later to wharves and grain silos. This was a working harbour, full of noise and smell, not a place for a weekend stroll.

Today the view tells a mixed story. To the east, the towers of the city centre crowd the skyline, and on a clear day you may catch the top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge beyond them. Below and to the south lies Blackwattle Bay, near the Sydney Fish Market, with its fishing boats and gulls. To the west, on the Rozelle side, you can see the brick bulk of the old White Bay Power Station, with its tall chimneys.

If you are walking, you are on the shared path on the northern side, used by walkers, runners and cyclists. Keep left and listen for bike bells, because cyclists commute along here at speed. The path climbs gently towards the middle of the bridge. As you rise, the wind picks up and the sounds of the city change. The traffic noise fades a little, and you start to hear halyards clinking on the boats below.

After dark, the bridge changes again. The towers and cables are lit, and the colours of the lighting sometimes change for special occasions and public events. From the shore at Pyrmont or from the parks in Rozelle, the lit cables glow against the night sky and reflect in the black water. It becomes one of the most recognisable shapes in the inner city at night, a calm white outline above the moving red and white lights of the cars.

Before you move on, stand still for a moment near the middle. Feel that faint vibration under your feet again. Look up the length of a single cable, from the deck to the top of the tower, and then to the flags beyond. Below you, the bay keeps working. Behind you, the city keeps moving. And the bridge holds it all together, quietly, one cable at a time.