Heritage Librarian Peter Edwards discusses on ABC Radio Perth the history of the iconic Barrack-Beaufort Street bridge from its first iteration built in 1880 through to its third iteration built between 1906 – 1908. Though altered in some ways, the Barrack Street Bridge of 1906 – 1908 remains in service today.
The State Library holds a variety of pictorial materials (see below) and newspaper articles about the bridges of Barrack across the late 19th and throughout the 20th century. Access to the original photographs of the bridges, including digitised copies of them, show the developing need of improved bridgeworks over the Eastern Railway.
Articles about the construction of the bridges and their place in Perth life are available in the original archival newspapers held at the State Library and are all available via The National Library of Australia’s Trove Newspapers website.
For more information on the Barrack Street Bridges:
The Railway Works In Perth, The Herald, 1880.
Our Own Correspondents, Geraldton Observer, 1880.
The Late Fatal Accident ,The Inquirer and Commercial News, 1888.
New Barrack Street Bridge, The Daily News, 1908.
Recorded live on ABC Radio Perth on 26 May 2023.
Transcript
(Beginning of Interview)
Sam Longley: So today on History Repeated we're looking at the Beaufort Street Bridge or as we know it now, the Barrack Street Bridge. Peter Edwards from the State Library joins us today. Good afternoon, Peter, welcome to the Long Lunch.
Peter Edwards: Good to be here.
Sam Longley: So tell me, why was the bridge needed, in the first place? Do we just need to get over it?
Peter Edwards: Oh, we literally needed to get over it. You really do.
Sam Longley: [Laughs]
Peter Edwards: You don't want to get hit by a train.
Sam Longley: Right.
Peter Edwards: The bridge was built, of course, to get across the newly laid Eastern Railway which at that time didn't terminate at Midland, it went as far as Guildford.
Sam Longley: Right.
Peter Edwards: So the new train line was going in and as a result of that they needed to put some crossing points over, right there at where we have the Barrack Street Bridge today. At that point though, it was called the Beaufort Street Bridge, and yeah it has a bit of history behind it this bridge.
Sam Longley: Well, let's start off with when it happened. Sometimes when new things happen, people get a little grumbly and they're not happy because…
Peter Edwards: True.
Sam Longley: …everybody has their own opinions of how they would have designed it, how they could have made it better. Were the people of Perth happy with the bridge?
Peter Edwards: Well, it's like you say, any new thing’s always going to have the pros and the cons and there certainly were both. When they put this bridge in, it did inconvenience the people who lived to the north of the new train line and there's one wonderful article - a letter to the editor, to our Fremantle Herald from Mark Schitz…
Sam Longley: You're going to read it for us.
Peter Edwards: I'm going to read it.
Sam Longley: [Laughs] Thank you Peter. I love it!
Peter Edwards: This is beautiful because one of, one of the benefits of the collections we have - the newspapers and the photographs we have of these bridges, particularly the newspapers of course though - we get to hear the voices of those times and I love being able to read what the, the everyday people, not necessarily the people in power, but the run of the mill Perthian. What were they saying and what were they thinking, and this is fantastic. I'll just read it to you. So…
The Railway Works in Perth to the Editor of the Herald:
“Sir, the manner in which the works of the Eastern Railway are being carried out at the intervention of Beaufort and Stirling Streets, Perth, is just now creating feelings something akin to indignation and dismay in the minds of citizens of local residents. By the original section of the line, there were level crossings at each of these streets, which are five chains distant from each other only, intersected by the line in a cutting some ten or twelve feet deep, rendering level crossings impossible and impractical. What it is doing is as follows:
Beaufort Street is being carried over the railway by a bridge of tarred jarrah with approaches said to be one in twelve, which is a pretty steep grade, but believed to be nearly one in six, to the utter disfigurement of the thoroughfare whilst Stirling Street is carried down to a railway level by a ditch-like steep approach on each side, very narrow, and of very sharp grade. Thus Beaufort Street is carried aloft, across the line by a hideous bridge and Stirling Street is brought down to rail level by a dangerous descent on each side and a sham level crossing. Stirling Street described, as the best street in the city, is not merely spoilt but absolutely ruined by the course adopted.
Yours truly, A Citizen”
[Laughs]
Sam Longley: [Laughs] And that was from a citizen. That was Peter Edwards from the State Library reading in the voice of a citizen from when was the paper?
Peter Edwards: 1880, in March.
Sam Longley: 1880. They did speak differently, didn’t they?
Peter Edwards: They did. They did, and that’s one of the benefits of having these records. I mean, we have papers going back to 1830, so you get to hear the original columnist... people writing to one another and talking about life as it was then, and I think that's a massive treasure and this is reflected all those years... 50 odd years later in the newspapers of Perth in 1880. It's the same sort of thing and so repetition of people expressing themselves and we have access to all that now.
Sam Longley: I got a little bit lost in his description and the cuts and the things and it says that it was built in a 1 in 6 gradient and he wanted a 1 in 12 grade?
Peter Edwards: That's right, so that's engineering terminology.
Sam Longley: Okay, do you know what that means?
Peter Edwards: If I can tell you, what that basically means is that the northern approach and the southern approach were very, very steep.
Sam Longley: Right.
Peter Edwards: Very, very steep or steeper than this particular citizen thought they should be...
Sam Longley: Of course.
Peter Edwards: ...for a very good bridge and it was causing concern for these people and it wasn't just the fact that it was steep but it was also very narrow and as we are going to see, those concerns that the citizens had at that time, or this particular citizen I suppose, were not unfounded because it did cause some people to come to grief and ended up bringing a need to change the bridges, as we went forward through time.
Sam Longley: Right, um...so what was wrong with that? How did they... did they fix the bridge. Is it still one in six?
Peter Edwards: Ah well, this is the thing... it was… basically the bridge of 1880…
Sam Longley: Yep.
Peter Edwards: It stayed in place until about 1890... until 1894.
Sam Longley: Right.
Peter Edwards: So, even though right at the very beginning you've had the citizens of Perth being a bit concerned about the danger of this bridge because it was very narrow, it was very steep, and there are instances, at least one instance, where we can see that the pitch or…
Sam Longley: Yeah.
Peter Edwards: ...the steepness of the bridge... did contribute to the death of a child.
Sam Longley: Oh no! How...
Peter Edwards: ‘Cos kids do what kids do, they dash about and there's one instance there in 18... this is eight years after the bridge was put up, so 1888, a little four-year-old and her friends are dashing across the street and a butcher's horse and cart are coming into Perth so…
Sam Longley: Yep.
Peter Edwards: …On to the southern slope of the bridge and as the horse went on to that southern descent, it picked up speed because of gravity and it's on the downward slope and that contributed and hit… to the child probably misjudging where the horse was and under the horse and cart the child went unfortunately and was killed. So, the concerns that the citizens raised all those years prior to 1888 were not unfounded, but there was more of a problem with it too because Perth was growing...
Sam Longley: Right
Peter Edwards: ...so as we go through time from 1880s doing the job it's meant to do, even though people are a bit grumbly about it, but as time passes, what's happening is, more and more people are settling north of the train line. So, there's more and more foot traffic, there's more and more horses and carts and buggies and so on, going north and south over the bridge. And there's no footpath for… to separate people…
Sam Longley: Oh!
Peter Edwards: ...pedestrians from carriages and horses. They're all sharing the same space. And as time passes, what we're finding is people are complaining about the groaning sounds coming from the bridge's heavier horses and more and more people go over it. And there's also the problem - the fact that it's so narrow and steep - the horses, when they go over this bridge, and a steam train is going underneath, while the horses are up high, they can see over the side of the bridge and you got this enormous smoke stack pumping out all this smoke, the heat and the noise, and the horses are getting spooked which is always a concern as you could imagine...
Sam Longley: Yes.
Peter Edwards: ...in such a confined space, the horses may, they may lose control of the horse and it could lead to more accidents. So, there were all these concerns seething away across the years from 1880 through to when they decided finally in 1894 to change the bridge or to upgrade the bridge, might be a better way to put it.
Sam Longley: So, we are speaking with Peter Edwards from the State Library about the old Beaufort Street bridge which turned into the Barrack Street Bridge. It had only lasted 14 years from 1880 to 1894.
Peter Edwards: That’s right.
Sam Longley: Not a long time for a bridge, so what was the big improvement? What change?
Peter Edwards: Well yeah it...
Sam Longley: Wider? Less steep? How did it go?
Peter Edwards: Correct on both counts. So, what they found was of course the bridge is very steep, it's very narrow, some of the audience, you might all remember in Maylands the Eighth Avenue Bridge? Now, that's been replaced as well. But the old Eighth Avenue Bridge, when I looked at some of the few photos of that original bridge, from 1880, it looked very similar in my memory to the Eighth Avenue Bridge that was replaced - so very narrow, very steep. But the bridge they replaced it with - The Barrack Street, well the Beaufort Street Bridge was replaced in 1884 with another Beaufort Barrack Street Bridge and that was something that was basically levelled out, didn't have that steep grade on approach and it was made of wrought iron and newer materials effectively.
Sam Longley: Mmm.
Peter Edwards: It wasn't the old, tarred jarrah. It was wrought iron brought across - shipped over from England and at a particular cost. I think it was one thousand and fifty-nine pounds [1059] sterling at the time…
Sam Longley: Phew! Steep!
Peter Edwards: So that's at a very steep price for a very now flat bridge!
Sam Longley: [Laughs] One in six. Yeah, and so…
Peter Edwards: And that was about $308,000 Australian today if you transfer... if you look at the costs... and you look at the way, the currency changes across time.
Sam Longley: And were people more impressed with the new bridge? Obviously, they're getting less of those groans from the tar and jarrah and now you've got steel, they've got to be at least impressed with that engineering you would think.
Peter Edwards: Very much so, very much so and it worked for the... what they called... what they said they needed to change the bridge to match the progress of the spirit of Perth because all the development was going on. You've got to remember that we're now talking about 1894, there's responsible government that's come to Western Australia around then. You've got the gold rush happening as people, people, people all over the place and so there's more of a need to improve that infrastructure. So, the 1894 bridge, met that need initially and it stayed there in place until about 1906, when they decided to change it again.
Sam Longley: So this is the third bridge.
Peter Edwards: Third bridge.
Sam Longley: 1906, was it still measured in chains? Because you mentioned that earlier…
Peter Edwards: That’s right, that’s right.
Sam Longley: So what... how do you measure something in a chain? Because when I think of a chain it could be any length.
Peter Edwards: Well this is the thing. This dates back... well chain scaling is the old way of measuring distances prior to metrication, so we officially went to the metric system in July 1974 but prior to that, and many of the maps you’ll see in the old Land Department maps, were measured in chain scales. And a chain scale, 1 chain is effectively 66 feet long, so 5 chains is going to be about 100 metres if you convert all around.
Sam Longley: Sure.
Peter Edwards: And you can see that now, even with the bridges in place and even with the Stirling Street crossings they're about 100 metres apart or thereabouts.
Sam Longley: Ok.
Peter Edwards: But yeah, back in that day it was chain scaling, and that dates back... that dates back to a guy called Gunter and I think the 16th century and he developed what was called Gunter's chain and that was where you have a link, basically an iron link chain every six or, I forget now, eight inches or something or other you had another link in the chain and that's how they did the measurements, all the way back, from then going forward into the early 20th century.
Sam Longley: So the new bridge...
Peter Edwards: Mmm...
Sam Longley: Which was in 1906.
Peter Edwards: 1906.
Sam Longley: If I remember my numbers correctly. How much of an improvement was that?
Peter Edwards: Well, the improvement was vast. What they did was effectively widen the 1894 bridge to match the width of Barrack Street as we know it today. And interestingly that 1906 bridge that they put up then, we pretty much have the same thing in place today. All the balustrading, the iron, the wrought iron lamp posts, that is all the original thing, original construction from 115 years ago.
Sam Longley: Wow!
Peter Edwards: Mmm...
Sam Longley: Fantastic!
Peter Edwards: Very good stuff.
Sam Longley: What do you think is the best bridge in WA? And I know, I mean, Peter you work at the State Library - bridges aren't necessarily your forte but we've all got... mine is the old Fremantle Bridge, which they're talking about destroying because it's made of wood. It can't last forever and I'm going to have to let it go. Your favourite bridge?
Peter Edwards: Well, I do love that Barrack Street Bridge because I've looked into the history of it so often, but the Fremantle bridges are really great as well. They're iconic, they're so impressive to look at as you go across the water, and they have their own history of where it's actually come down at one point. It’s been destroyed at one point. I think the traffic bridge, no, the train bridge I think was hit by a car.
Sam Longley: The train bridge was hit by a... Yeah.
Peter Edwards: That's right. So, the history around these bridges is what I love about them and of course the sheer size of the Freo bridges are fantastic but the one...the Barrack Street Beaufort Street Bridge I like that more really because it's going to stay there for the duration I would suggest, there's so much to it.
Sam Longley: Do you have to call it the Barrack and Beaufort Street Bridge because you know the history or can you just stick with one name.
Peter Edwards: I just call it the New Barrack Street Bridge.
Sam Longley: The New Barrack Street Bridge. Peter Edwards, you're an absolute gem as always. Thank you so much for talking all things bridges. Are we going to see you again?
Peter Edwards: Ah yes, you will, you will see me I think in August. But I'm not sure at this point.
Sam Longley: Ok. No worries. We'll see you then. Appreciate it.
Peter Edwards: Ok. Bye then.
Sam Longley: That's Peter Edwards from the State Library talking about the...I'm going to have to say it... the New Barrack Street Bridge because that is the way he would like us to say it. But it was Beaufort Street Bridge at one point. Hey thanks for joining me on the Long Lunch!
(End of Interview)
