GARGANTUAN girders are being carefully put in place as the newest member of an exclusive club - bridges over the Macquarie River - really starts to take shape.
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While Bathurst has talked for years about another crossing of the Macquarie to ease the traffic pressure as the Kelso population booms, a new $220 million bridge much further down the river at Dubbo is fast becoming a reality.
Major work got started in March 2023 on the new bridge, which is part of an upgrade of the Newell Highway through Dubbo.
Ten months later, Bridget, a 60-metre crane named by 12 year-old Robert Lennox from Dubbo Public School, is hard at work lowering more than 100 60-tonne girders, each 34 metres long, between the vertical pillars.
"We're still driving some more of the piles, so that 'thud, thud, thud' that people hear around town will keep going for a few more months ... but in parallel, we're starting to lift 123 girders into place," Transport for NSW regional director west Alistair Lunn said.
"It's a really technical piece of work: we need a 60-metre-long crane to lift those girders into place."
Build a bridge (and get over it)
- The Macquarie is formed just outside Bathurst when the Fish and Campbells rivers meet.
- The low level bridge over the river on Hereford Street at Bathurst closes regularly due to flooding. Unusually, the Great Western Highway was cut in November 2022 by an enormous Macquarie flood.
- The river under the bridge at Eglinton was reduced to waterholes at the height of the last drought.
- A new bridge over the river at Dixons Long Point, between Orange and Mudgee, has been talked about for years, but is looking unlikely to go ahead any time soon.
- The bridge over the Macquarie at Wellington collapsed in January 1989 when an earthmoving excavator snagged a truss.
- A pier from a previous bridge over the Macquarie at Eglinton remains on the Bathurst side of the river.
Helping Bridget with the labour is an army of 310 tradespeople and logistics workers, including 36 through the Aboriginal Participation in Construction Program and 92 who live in the Dubbo area.
When the girders are all in place, concrete will be poured to form the bridge decks, each six girders wide. Asphalt will then be laid on top of the concrete.
The 660-metre bridge - which hasn't been without controversy - is being built north of Dubbo's CBD and will form part of a re-routed Newell Highway.
The NSW Government says the bridge will ease traffic congestion in Dubbo and enhance access across the Macquarie during floods.
"One of the key features is the east-west connectivity," Mr Lunn said.
When the Emile Serisier Bridge is closed, the city comes to a halt, he said, and "that's both not great for the community, but it's also a risk for people who need emergency services to get across town or need to get to vital appointments".
"We're also bypassing 12 intersections on Erskine and Bourke Street with local roads," he said.
"So that makes a big difference from a safety point of view and removes a lot of that heavy freight traffic from that Erskine Street area near the bowling club."
Work over the next three months will include river piling and land piling on the western side of the Macquarie River to Bourke Street.
On the eastern side of the river, work will continue on the pile caps, columns, headstocks and girder placement, according to Transport for NSW.
Depending on weather, Transport for NSW anticipates construction in the river itself to begin in June.
The New Dubbo Bridge project is being jointly funded by the Australian and NSW governments.
The bridge is expected to be completed in late 2026.
