Bridge History

A little bit of history

The St Hubert Island Bridge was officially opened in 1971, but it was never to be the bridge it was intended to be.

An extract from the Island's History book - "St Huberts Island 1788 - 2000 An Historical Account" by Island resident CJ Moye records the sad start to our link to the mainland, and the disasterous discovery before 1999...

The front page of the June 1999 edition of The Island News tells more of the story...

And as recent as mid-2020, Central Coast Council sent divers down to inspect the state of our 49 year old  bridge's foundations.

Their discoveries indicated that any new structures placed on the bridge cannot exceed the weight of the current railing if they were to be removed - as in replacing them with an anti-jump barrier.

So any new barrier to stop bridge jumpers needs to be "lightweight" and not put any more loading on the bridge - thus the current "Brian McGowan Bridge railing" design decided on by the Council in 2020 that we are told conforms to weight restrictions and Australian standards requirements.