Such an interesting tone of narration in those days: No melodramatic, hyperbolic emotions like "the biggest bridge disaster in Australia's history"; no "heroes" during the collapse or the rebuild; no human blame for the "disaster"; no "fraught problems for the engineers" to overcome; no "genius innovations"; no jingoistic back-patting like "the largest ever bridge reconstruction in the history of the country". Just straight facts. So clear. So refreshing compared with the bullshit treatment a story like that would elicit in the MSM today.
Travelled over the bridge into Hobart about 1 hour prior to the bridge coming down. Later, looked out the window of the hotel and said to brand new wife, "the bridge has fallen down", she said, "rubbish", the first and only time she was ever wrong. The next morning we could clearly see the two cars hanging precariously.
I went to Montagu Bay Primary between 1977 and 1982 ... collecting off-cuts of huge steel cables after school was fun. All sorts of debris made its' way to my Rosny Hill tree house. Great video Libraries Tasmania.
I went to Montagu Bay Primary too. My final year was 1985. We could see the Tasman Bridge from our kitchen window. I remember going to town on the ferry from Kangaroo Bay. And yes, lots of fun building cubby houses on Rosny Hill.
When ships are passing under the Tasman Bridge they stop traffic on both sides as a safety requirement now. Thats what my Aunt told me when I visited her in Tasmania.
I had a girlfriend whose father bitched so much about traffic delays. I found it incomprehensible that he didn't recognise the value in the safety precautions.
They didn't find welders capable of welding "out of position" and producing quality work. They just flipped the work to the "most comfortable" position for the "workers" they already had.
@@deeremeyer1749 The "so-called bridge"? What the heck is the Tasman Bridge if not a bridge? And your use of quotation marks is ... eccentric, at best.
Thanks so much for this! We had a rough couple of years in Tasmania in the 70s. The Blythe Star disaster in '73 and then the Tasman Bridge a couple of years later. I note the 'interesting' work clothes of many of the bridge workers, beanies, lumber jackets, leather shoes, only thing missing was a footy jumper! Great stuff.
I was there 3 months after collapse on holiday from Qld took pictures. And again on February 78 Drove over repaired bridge in my 72 HQ Belmont panel Van 😄🤠🇦🇺
We drove over the bridge hours before it was struck. I moved to the mainland in 1980. Every time I go home, I find it hard to drive over the bridge. I’m ok as a passenger, but not as the driver.
I went over the bridge a few months before the collapse while on a primary school trip from Vic. I remember the local coach driver boasted at the time that the Tasman Bridge was indestructible.
My mother missed the bridge going down by 3 or 4 minutes. And the EK Holden wagon was owned by my cousins sometime boss The HQ coupe is still around. It was bad news for eastern shore people as they had initially no real way of getting across except for a rough dirt road about 20 miles long too Bridgewater and then the same of bitumen back to the city. Soon after they got the ferryboat shuffle going with all sorts of craft and a bit later a temporary Bailey bridge across a few miles upstream. I visited a few times in that period. That pic driving up the bridge makes it look very steep which it is not. Though it has a fair rise.
I left Hobart in September '61 and well remember the initial construction underway on both sides of the Derwent (I was almost 8 at the time). I revisited Hobart in November 1993 and took the boat ride between Constitution Dock and the Cadbury factory. Along the way, we were given a talk by one of the cruise personnel who described in detail the Lake Illawarra crash and the subsequent effect it had on Hobart. The effect was devastating (initially) with only one effective road across the Derwent (at Bridgewater) and it required a round trip of 40 or more kilometres - ferry services became an absolute necessity, provided they could get the ferries (some old ones came down from Sydney). Hobart airport also existed on the Eastern side so traffic between it and Hobart (CBD) was hampered. However the end result is remarkable with a third bridge (Bowen, as well as Bridgewater and Tasman) also built across the Derwent and the Eastern side now has a more independent outlook. The video is quite good but I would have liked to have seen the inclusion of diagrams to illustrate the various talking points (eg piles, decking etc). Still, thumbs up.
That was pretty good how they made that movie on the reconstruction of the Hobart bridge write down to detail of all the engineering yes I do remember it when they were doing the work back then and when it was broken and half too
I was That was 55 years ago for me, and I had never had a chance to see how much work was involved at the time. The bridge is way to small these days for all the traffic.
Oldest brother was in the Australian Army spent over a year there . Helped out with transport on ferry's etc . Too young to remember much more.. incredibly it could have been a lot worse.
In those days serious injuries and deaths on the job were just considered an unavoidable price that had to be paid for progress. For example the Manapouri hydro scheme in New Zealand claimed the lives of 16 workers. I'm a tradesman, and while I find the health and safety requirements tedious at times, it does make a difference. Deaths and serious injuries on large construction projects are mercifully rare these days. Something to think about anyway.
Why didn't they just initially build a suspension bridge? They are specifically designed to span great distances and would only require towers on the shore of each side of the river. I just have never understood why they went with this design.
Not practical as the land on either side is almost sea level. Sure, you could build big towers, buty then you need huge ramps to get the cars up to that height.
The additional cost compared to the design that went ahead was a factor. Having said this there were some cost over runs building the Tasman Bridge and ultimately, the additional expense of a suspension bridge would not have been so much more as to make it prohibitive. 20/20 hindsight.
Johnnywestoz yes, it's very deep there and large sections of the bridge landed on it. It would be a huge operation and probably benefit no one. There are a few dive videos on UA-cam. I've caught some massive 7 gill sharks when drifting over it. People would be shocked to know how big the sharks are in the Derwent, lol.
Mum and dad was nearly on it when mum was pregnant with me and my twin brother but changed her mind at went home so if mum didn't change her mind i wouldn't be here now And fun fact there was a song called ferry boat shuffle about the bridge but not many people know there was a second one sung by buddy williams called the wreck of the Tasman bridge
Not surprising at the time. Some thought was given to a possible salvage but the difficulty of doing so included the depth of water (around 40m), economic ease of recovery ($'s) and the need to get access between both sides of the Derwent resolved as quickly as possible. Although not clearly explained in the documentary, part of the reconstruction involved setting some of the piles through the sunken ships hull itself - so it cannot be raised now, whatever the technology.
There was a film made about a tassie construction worker who worked on this bridge. He was a alcoholic an when he got sprung he'll chuck his grog over into the derwent river - i think i watch it at school ? sometime in the 70s , Does anybody out there remember this??....
1:35 - An article about the HQ Holden perched over the edge of the bridge: www.carsguide.com.au/oversteer/this-hq-monaros-auto-transmission-casing-saved-an-entire-family-66872
Hi John, unfortunately seven crew members on the Lake Illawarra were trapped and drowned. As the collision occurred on a Sunday evening, there was relatively little traffic on the bridge. While no cars were travelling between the 18th and 19th pylons when that section collapsed, four cars drove over the gap, killing five occupants. Two drivers managed to stop their vehicles at the edge, but not before their front wheels had dropped over the lip of the bridge deck. A total of 12 people died in the disaster: seven crew of the MV Lake Illawarra and five motorists
I believe out of the 12 deceased, there were 2 not able to be recovered. Dr Tom Jones, the Welshman who had been in Tasmania since 1965 with his family, who was the local GP in Bellerive, drove over the gap and his car is likely to be buried under the ship. Prescription pads were found a day or so later washed up on Bellerive Beach. Interstingly, it took over 45 years for the Coroner to announce him as deceased. Graham Kemp, a 28 year old crewman was up in the fo'c'sle of the ship trying to drop anchors after the collision when the roadway collapsed on him killing him instantly, he was never able to be freed.
Yep, 12 killed, two and a half years of work, and $X million dollars repair all because of an inattentive (maybe drunk) ship's captain, I believe. I loved PM Gough Whitlam's immediate comment at the time: "What sort of idiot steers a ship into a bridge" !!!
The captain of the Lake Illawarra (Captain Coleslaw Pelc) went down with the ship didn't he? He was drunk on Melbourne Bitters and crashed into the bridge and then everyone in the cars up top saw the road fall away and they all sharted their pants and hit the brakes.
@@dannygayler90 Facile comment. How can mistakes be learned from if not scrutinised? Pelc was negligent and there were some repercussions at the enquiry into the disaster. That's historical fact.
Such an interesting tone of narration in those days:
No melodramatic, hyperbolic emotions like "the biggest bridge disaster in Australia's history";
no "heroes" during the collapse or the rebuild;
no human blame for the "disaster";
no "fraught problems for the engineers" to overcome;
no "genius innovations";
no jingoistic back-patting like "the largest ever bridge reconstruction in the history of the country".
Just straight facts. So clear. So refreshing compared with the bullshit treatment a story like that would elicit in the MSM today.
Agree. The world has gone to shit
Such great observation. I totally agree! So concerning of what has happened to journalism
Travelled over the bridge into Hobart about 1 hour prior to the bridge coming down. Later, looked out the window of the hotel and said to brand new wife, "the bridge has fallen down", she said, "rubbish", the first and only time she was ever wrong.
The next morning we could clearly see the two cars hanging precariously.
Good to hear she who must be obeyed was quick to get the hosue in order.
Love this oldschool narrator voice, calming .
The audio book The Gulag archipelago on UA-cam is similar
Stan Murrowood from ABC Radio Hobart. Only retired a few years ago after 53 years on radio. Great narrators voice 😶
It's unbelievable how history has repeated itself nearly 50 years later in Baltimore a few days ago. So sad.
Narrated by Stan Murrowood who worked at Radio 5AD Adelaide in the 70's .
I went to Montagu Bay Primary between 1977 and 1982 ... collecting off-cuts of huge steel cables after school was fun. All sorts of debris made its' way to my Rosny Hill tree house. Great video Libraries Tasmania.
I went to Montagu Bay Primary too. My final year was 1985. We could see the Tasman Bridge from our kitchen window. I remember going to town on the ferry from Kangaroo Bay. And yes, lots of fun building cubby houses on Rosny Hill.
When ships are passing under the Tasman Bridge they stop traffic on both sides as a safety requirement now. Thats what my Aunt told me when I visited her in Tasmania.
Yes that's correct there is a loud horn that sounds to let people know
I had a girlfriend whose father bitched so much about traffic delays. I found it incomprehensible that he didn't recognise the value in the safety precautions.
@@sapphoculloden5215I find it hilarious you think "stopping shipping" makes that "replacement" so-called bridge "safe".
They didn't find welders capable of welding "out of position" and producing quality work. They just flipped the work to the "most comfortable" position for the "workers" they already had.
@@deeremeyer1749 The "so-called bridge"? What the heck is the Tasman Bridge if not a bridge? And your use of quotation marks is ... eccentric, at best.
Thanks so much for this! We had a rough couple of years in Tasmania in the 70s. The Blythe Star disaster in '73 and then the Tasman Bridge a couple of years later. I note the 'interesting' work clothes of many of the bridge workers, beanies, lumber jackets, leather shoes, only thing missing was a footy jumper! Great stuff.
I was there 3 months after collapse on holiday from Qld took pictures. And again on February 78 Drove over repaired bridge in my 72 HQ Belmont panel Van 😄🤠🇦🇺
My grandfather worked on the bridge, he operated some of the cranes and without him the bridge would not be complete I like to think..
The driver of the HQ Monaro and FB Holden were incredibly lucky .. good Holden luck
We drove over the bridge hours before it was struck. I moved to the mainland in 1980. Every time I go home, I find it hard to drive over the bridge. I’m ok as a passenger, but not as the driver.
That's my worst fear, driving off
A bridge and drowning in dark
Cold Water.
I went over the bridge a few months before the collapse while on a primary school trip from Vic. I remember the local coach driver boasted at the time that the Tasman Bridge was indestructible.
MrButtonpresser how ironic
@@mishumydog That's not ironic, he was just wrong.
My mother missed the bridge going down by 3 or 4 minutes. And the EK Holden wagon was owned by my cousins sometime boss The HQ coupe is still around.
It was bad news for eastern shore people as they had initially no real way of getting across except for a rough dirt road about 20 miles long too Bridgewater and then the same of bitumen back to the city.
Soon after they got the ferryboat shuffle going with all sorts of craft and a bit later a temporary Bailey bridge across a few miles upstream.
I visited a few times in that period.
That pic driving up the bridge makes it look very steep which it is not. Though it has a fair rise.
LDN Wholesale the Monaro is on display in the Launceston car museum.
The bloke that owned the HQ Holden still has it to this day
That's awesome. I love HQ 's.
its at the automobile museum in launceston atm
My dads friends dad Owns it and I go to Launceston to see it
Fun fact: he had to clime out the tail gate
I was aged 23 months when the bridge came down. I remember we used the old Bailey bridge after and it was a rattler
The snow was down very low on the mountain. Don't often see it settled that low!
I left Hobart in September '61 and well remember the initial construction underway on both sides of the Derwent (I was almost 8 at the time). I revisited Hobart in November 1993 and took the boat ride between Constitution Dock and the Cadbury factory. Along the way, we were given a talk by one of the cruise personnel who described in detail the Lake Illawarra crash and the subsequent effect it had on Hobart. The effect was devastating (initially) with only one effective road across the Derwent (at Bridgewater) and it required a round trip of 40 or more kilometres - ferry services became an absolute necessity, provided they could get the ferries (some old ones came down from Sydney). Hobart airport also existed on the Eastern side so traffic between it and Hobart (CBD) was hampered. However the end result is remarkable with a third bridge (Bowen, as well as Bridgewater and Tasman) also built across the Derwent and the Eastern side now has a more independent outlook. The video is quite good but I would have liked to have seen the inclusion of diagrams to illustrate the various talking points (eg piles, decking etc). Still, thumbs up.
Thank goodness for Electric Eric doing this rebuild, everyone else still would have been scratching their heads to rebuild it if it wasn’t for him…
That was pretty good how they made that movie on the reconstruction of the Hobart bridge write down to detail of all the engineering yes I do remember it when they were doing the work back then and when it was broken and half too
I pray for the repose of the Captain and crew of the Lake Illawarra , May they all R I P !
Thanks for sharing and congratulations for completing such an excellent task.
Thank you for uploading these hobart has changed an incredible amount
I was That was 55 years ago for me, and I had never had a chance to see how much work was involved at the time.
The bridge is way to small these days for all the traffic.
Congratulations to all involved in this vital transport link.😁👌👌👏👏👏
Oldest brother was in the Australian Army spent over a year there . Helped out with transport on ferry's etc . Too young to remember much more.. incredibly it could have been a lot worse.
I crashed my mountain bike on here a few weeks ago, clipped the handle bars & over I went. I also almost needed a reconstruction.
Aus80sRockRadio you fell off the Tasman
LOLOLOL!!!!!
Taz- main - yen!
I crashed my E bike on the bridge some 4 yrs ago , the bike and pedestrian lanes much too narrow !
@@dannygayler90 Yeah it's not good. Touch wood I've had no further incidents since Feb '15. I must be slowing down in my old age....😒
Very impressive project
Brilliant video, Thank you for uploading this.
Not a Hi-Viz vest in sight, mercifully.
In those days serious injuries and deaths on the job were just considered an unavoidable price that had to be paid for progress. For example the Manapouri hydro scheme in New Zealand claimed the lives of 16 workers. I'm a tradesman, and while I find the health and safety requirements tedious at times, it does make a difference. Deaths and serious injuries on large construction projects are mercifully rare these days. Something to think about anyway.
I live 5 mins away from our Tassie Bridge
This is so similar to the sunshine skyway bridge
disaster.
Ship Hits Bridge And It Collapses:
ua-cam.com/users/results?search_query=Ship+hits+bridge+And+It+Collapses+
Ayy been over dat bridge sooo many tiems
Driven over it many times. When a boat passes under, all traffic is stopped.
Why didn't they just initially build a suspension bridge? They are specifically designed to span great distances and would only require towers on the shore of each side of the river. I just have never understood why they went with this design.
Not practical as the land on either side is almost sea level. Sure, you could build big towers, buty then you need huge ramps to get the cars up to that height.
The additional cost compared to the design that went ahead was a factor. Having said this there were some cost over runs building the Tasman Bridge and ultimately, the additional expense of a suspension bridge would not have been so much more as to make it prohibitive. 20/20 hindsight.
Did they salvage the ship or leave it where it sank??
Hi RCBM, the wreck is still under the bridge.
It's still there. I see it on my sounder when I pass over it on my boat :)
@@officialWWM wow! I guess it’s just too difficult to remove it. It’d be an awesome dive though I reckon.
Johnnywestoz yes, it's very deep there and large sections of the bridge landed on it. It would be a huge operation and probably benefit no one. There are a few dive videos on UA-cam. I've caught some massive 7 gill sharks when drifting over it. People would be shocked to know how big the sharks are in the Derwent, lol.
Mum and dad was nearly on it when mum was pregnant with me and my twin brother but changed her mind at went home so if mum didn't change her mind i wouldn't be here now
And fun fact there was a song called ferry boat shuffle about the bridge but not many people know there was a second one sung by buddy williams called the wreck of the Tasman bridge
Surprised the ship has not been salvaged, in some ways thats good.
Not surprising at the time. Some thought was given to a possible salvage but the difficulty of doing so included the depth of water (around 40m), economic ease of recovery ($'s) and the need to get access between both sides of the Derwent resolved as quickly as possible. Although not clearly explained in the documentary, part of the reconstruction involved setting some of the piles through the sunken ships hull itself - so it cannot be raised now, whatever the technology.
"Water mains" crossing a river by bridge. Obviously that was and is WAY "cheaper" than removing debris and replacing underwater water mains.
There was a film made about a tassie construction worker who worked on this bridge. He was a alcoholic an when he got sprung he'll chuck his grog over into the derwent river - i think i watch it at school ? sometime in the 70s , Does anybody out there remember this??....
1:35 - An article about the HQ Holden perched over the edge of the bridge:
www.carsguide.com.au/oversteer/this-hq-monaros-auto-transmission-casing-saved-an-entire-family-66872
Does anyone know how many cars, and people, ended up at the river bottom? Were the cars, and the bodies from the cars and the ship, all retrieved?
Hi John, unfortunately seven crew members on the Lake Illawarra were trapped and drowned. As the collision occurred on a Sunday evening, there was relatively little traffic on the bridge. While no cars were travelling between the 18th and 19th pylons when that section collapsed, four cars drove over the gap, killing five occupants. Two drivers managed to stop their vehicles at the edge, but not before their front wheels had dropped over the lip of the bridge deck. A total of 12 people died in the disaster: seven crew of the MV Lake Illawarra and five motorists
I believe out of the 12 deceased, there were 2 not able to be recovered. Dr Tom Jones, the Welshman who had been in Tasmania since 1965 with his family, who was the local GP in Bellerive, drove over the gap and his car is likely to be buried under the ship. Prescription pads were found a day or so later washed up on Bellerive Beach.
Interstingly, it took over 45 years for the Coroner to announce him as deceased.
Graham Kemp, a 28 year old crewman was up in the fo'c'sle of the ship trying to drop anchors after the collision when the roadway collapsed on him killing him instantly, he was never able to be freed.
I wasn’t born when this happened, still very interesting to see tho
i reckon alot of people refused to go on the bridge for years after it was reconstructed.
At 5:16, the supports weighed 65 tons but moved into place with a 30 ton crane. Really?
Did this link Victoria to Tasmania?
Are you joking?
It's in Hobart to cross the Derwent
River. It's too far to build a bridge
To Victoria.
Unfortunately no, they still use the tunnel to go across to Victoria
Yes.
Yep, 12 killed, two and a half years of work, and $X million dollars repair all because of an inattentive (maybe drunk) ship's captain, I believe. I loved PM Gough Whitlam's immediate comment at the time: "What sort of idiot steers a ship into a bridge" !!!
I hate high bridges
Typical they widened it because it was probably never going to cope with the traffic, all these projects never allow for future population growth.
There certainly was much OH&S around in those day. Some of the working were just wear socks & street shoes....lol
Yeah, we got a lot more done back then
Nothing changed about that bridge for me even if I watch the vid then go on it
Wasn't that bridge destroyed by a ship?
You obviously slept through the first 1/2 of the video
No mate, meteorite. Yeah, bad couple of weeks. Then the whole Godzilla thing...
In our politically correct era, we need to ask, would the reconstruction have earned the 🌈✔ 🤔
Bags of cement? Hollow "piles" driven through "the debris"? Concrete trucks on barges for a "pour"?
Holy shit that "engineering" is sketchy as hell.
So what are these "culturally sensitive" words that are inappropriate today?
gubbah what's sad? That society has fallen to such a low point that they feel the need to put such an absurd disclaimer.
Too many white people in the video...
Destruction of the bridge eventually caused me to leave Hobart forever.
Why was that?
Why am I here???
Far too many offensive words and descriptions for me to watch! Wow, just wrap us all up in cotton wool and be done with it
The captain of the Lake Illawarra (Captain Coleslaw Pelc) went down with the ship didn't he?
He was drunk on Melbourne Bitters and crashed into the bridge and then everyone in the cars up top saw the road fall away and they all sharted their pants and hit the brakes.
We shouldn't talk ill of the deceased , we are all human and are all prone to mistakes , ( There are no Perfect People living upon the earth ) !
@@dannygayler90 Facile comment. How can mistakes be learned from if not scrutinised? Pelc was negligent and there were some repercussions at the enquiry into the disaster. That's historical fact.