collapse

Memorial plaque

A memorial plaque was paid for and erected by bridge workers, and unveiled on 15 October 1978 in honour and memory of their 35 comrades who died as a result of the bridge’s collapse.
The memorial plaque.

The inscription reads:

Construction workers employed on West Gate Bridge erected and dedicated this memorial to their 35 workmates who were killed when a span of the bridge collapsed during construction at 11.50 am on 15th October 1970.

Our comrades who lost their lives were:

Victims

Only yesterday they’d all laughed when they felt the span move. ‘She must be having growing pains’ someone said.

On the morning of 15 October, Ian Miller walked on to the span he and the men had just recently put in place on top of the huge 155ft concrete piers on the west side of the River Yarra. His colleague Jack Hindshaw was there. They waved a greeting to each other.

Jack, 42, the resident engineer for the bridge designers, Freeman Fox and Partners, had been sent out from London. Only a few weeks before, Ian and Jack had assured the men the bridge was safe after a similar bridge at Milford Haven, Wales, had collapsed and killed four men. Now this span was giving trouble.

The collapse

2000 tons of concrete and steel and more than 50 men plunge into the Yarra River.
The aftermath

Almost as soon as he put the phone down, Gerit Hardenberg heard the low rumbling sound coming across the river. It grew, like the side of a mountain falling on top of him, and then faded into silence.

What Gerit Hardenberg could not hear was the eerie pinging noise that came from the flakes of rust peeling off weathered steel or the jarring screech of metal moving slowly across metal.

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