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23/03/2024

More than 160,000 cars, buses, motorbikes, and trucks, and 480 trains travel over it each day, and it's just turned 92 years old.

Happy birthday to our iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge. Our city wouldn't be the same without you.

23/03/2024

On this day in 1932 - 3 days before the official opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, a lucky bunch of around 50,000 school children walked across the Bridge in celebration of its completion.

📷: National Museum of Australia

23/03/2024

On this day in 1932 huge crowds gathered for the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge!

The colossal project took 1400 workers, eight years, 52800 tonnes of steel, and 272,000 litres of paint to complete.

As well as providing a vital passageway across the harbour, the bridge was also nicknamed ‘The Iron Lung’ because of the huge number of jobs it provided during The Great Depression.

Explore the Library's amazing Sydney Harbour Bridge collection, including photographs, oral histories, architectural designs and more.

Read our online story and listen to the podcast: https://thebridge.sl.nsw.gov.au/

📸 Crowd crossing the Bridge, Sydney Harbour Bridge Celebrations, 1932 by Hall & Co.

23/03/2024

The Sydney Harbour Bridge opened 92 years ago today, changing the way we travel by road and rail across our city for decades to come.

23/03/2024

17 March 1858, the first Pyrmont Bridge constructed by the Pyrmont Bridge Company was opened. A wooden pile bridge with an iron centre 'swing panel' to allow ships to pass in and out of Darling Harbour. In the first two weeks 20,000 pedestrians paid the one penny toll which was eventually abolished in 1884 — Pyrmont Bridge Company, also planned to build the Glebe Island Bridge and the Blackwattle Bay Bridge, with the backing of the Parliament of New South Wales.

The present steel Pyrmont Bridge was built in 1902, the oldest surviving electrically-operated swingspan bridge in the world. A major feat of engineering in the day, originally drawing its power from the Powerhouse in Ultimo — Today over 5 million pedestrians cross over it each year.

📸 Pyrmont Bridge Then & Nows by Kevin Sundgren
👉 https://www.facebook.com/groups/SydneyThenandNow/permalink/4017689711603951/
👉https://www.facebook.com/groups/SydneyThenandNow/permalink/2591906764182260/

PHOTO: A packed Pyrmont Bridge with Sydneysiders going about their daily business. Sydney Town Hall pictured top left - c.1905
[Photo by Charles Henry Kerry » State Archives of NSW]

23/03/2024

Historic mosque in the cemetery, Bourke, NSW, Australia. In the 19th and early 20th centuries camels were used extensively in outback Australia, and many of the camel keepers were Afghans. The camels and their keepers are gone, but this humble mosque remains as a reminder of the important part they played in the development of modern Australia. Another early Afghan-Australian mosque survives in the mining city of Broken Hill.

23/03/2024

Sent in by Kevin Sundgren, with the following.

c1890 ~ 2019

Circular Quay, then with paddle steamers and sloops on a working harbour with The Rocks in the background. Today, i lined up the photos with the Sailors Home which shows how much of the waterline has been reclaimed. The building of the Harbour Bridge claimed many homes on Prince St, The Rocks.

Images Charles Kerry c/- Nat.Lib of Australia / K.Sundgren.

23/03/2024

A 1920s vierw of the then Sanitarium (SAN) Hospital located on Fox Valley Road, Wahroonga.
SLNSW

23/03/2024

Waverley Woollen Mills first went into operation in 1874. Established by Scotsman Peter Bulman at Distillery Creek, Waverley is one of Australia’s oldest woollen mills. During the First and Second World Wars Waverley supplied blankets to the various arms of the Australian military. According to their website Waverly Mills once boasted 80% of the Australian blanket market. This picture was taken around the 1890s by an unknown photographer. Fleeces can be seen on the large tables, presumably waiting to be prepared for the spinning process. Distillery Creek can just be made out in the foreground with a footbridge crossing it.
LPIC147-7-198

23/03/2024

Fitzroy Street, Syrry Hills, in 1875

Surry Hills, on Cadigal land, provided grazing, garden produce, timber, stone and clay to the new colony, and wealthy colonists built country houses there. Subdivision from the 1830s made it one of Sydney's most populous districts by the 1890s. Poor drainage and building rapidly created slum conditions, rife with crime and poverty. Demolitions and remodelling by city and state governments made some improvements, but after World War II, when industry moved out and residents shifted to newer suburbs, Surry Hills became attractive to new migrants and was revitalised.

Photo Source: State Library of NSW

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