Bridgewater Bridge

About

The Bridgewater Bridge is a 1.2-kilometre-long (0.7 mi) concrete box girder bridge that carries the Midland Highway across the River Derwent in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. This bridge connects the Hobart suburbs of Bridgewater and Granton. It accommodates a four-lane highway and a grade-separated footpath and cycle lane. It is the fifth such bridge at this location to carry this name. The bridge was funded by the Australian and Tasmanian Governments at a cost of $786 million and constructed by McConnell Dowell. It is expected to service 22,000 trips per day. It is the first bridge at the location to have a marine navigation clearance of greater than 16 metres - consistent with the Bowen Bridge. It was opened in June 2025 to replace the fourth Bridgewater Bridge (Bridgewater Bridge and Causeway), a steel truss vertical-lift bridge and specially-built causeway. This was a two-lane road bridge that also carried the South Railway Line until its closure in 2014. This bridge had been in operation since 1946, and was the oldest surviving lift span bridge in Australia; lifting of the bridge caused considerable traffic delays in the bridge's final years. The Bridgewater Bridge was among the first bridges constructed in Tasmania after British settlement in 1803, and gave its name to the nearby suburb of Bridgewater. Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur commissioned the construction of the bridge and causeway to connect the Launceston – Hobart Trunk Road, linking both Tasmanian towns and providing easier access to farmlands in the interior of Tasmania. Construction commenced on the bridge in 1829. Operations were supervised by Roderic O'Connor. The causeway, which was constructed first, was built by a workforce of 200 convicts who had been sentenced to secondary punishment. These convicts, using nothing but wheelbarrows, shovels and picks and muscle power, shifted 2 million tonnes (2.2 million short tons) of soil, stones and clay. The finished causeway stretched 1.3 kilometres (1 mi), although did not span the full width of the Derwent. The original plan apparently called for a viaduct, but this plan was abandoned and the hal

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