Sydney Harbour Bridge — bridge
Image by LM07 from Pixabay

Sydney Harbour Bridge

  • 1 min read
  • 33.852° S 151.211° E

Interesting facts

  • The four granite-faced pylons carry no load at all; they were added mainly to give the arch a visual frame.
  • About six million Australian-made rivets, all driven by hand, hold the steelwork together; the largest weighed 3.5 kg and was almost 40 cm long.
  • On a hot day the steel expands enough to raise the top of the arch by up to 18 cm.
  • The summit of the arch stands 134 metres above sea level, and the arch itself spans 504 metres between its bearings.
  • The steelwork weighs about 52,800 tonnes, of which some 39,000 tonnes are in the arch alone.
  • The granite on the pylons, about 18,000 cubic metres of it, was quarried at Moruya, roughly 300 km south of Sydney.
  • Its broad, rounded silhouette earned the bridge the local nickname the Coathanger.
  • The contract went to Dorman Long of Middlesbrough in England, and about 79 percent of the structural steel arrived from England already fabricated.
  • The bridge cost about £6.25 million, a debt that was not fully paid off until 1988.
  • Every coat of paint covers some 485,000 square metres of steel and takes roughly 30,000 litres of paint.

Why it is worth it

Sydney Harbour is deep enough that no one could sink temporary piers out into the water to support the arch while it was being built. Engineers under Dr John Bradfield solved it by building outward from each shore at once, anchoring huge steel cables into the rock on both banks to hold the two half-arches up by tension as they crept toward each other over the water, joining in the middle in August 1930 with the whole structure still unsupported from below. It remains one of the more nerve-wracking cantilever builds of its era — sixteen construction workers died over the eight years it took.

Before opening the bridge to traffic, engineers ran the ultimate load test: 96 steam locomotives, coupled together into four trains, were parked end to end across all four rail tracks simultaneously, loading the deck with roughly the heaviest weight it could ever realistically carry.

The official opening ceremony didn't go as planned. As the state premier, Jack Lang, raised his scissors to cut the ribbon, a man on horseback named Francis de Groot burst from the crowd, slashed the ribbon with a cavalry sword, and declared the bridge open in the name of King George V — a stunt by the far-right New Guard movement, which considered Lang's Labor government illegitimate. De Groot was arrested, fined five pounds for offensive behaviour, then successfully countersued for wrongful arrest — and the resulting court case legally established that he, not the premier, had opened the bridge.

Getting there

Located in Sydney Central Business District. Sydney Kingsford Smith International Airport (SYD) is about 11 km away.

Plan your visit

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Nearby places

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in New South Wales 12The Most Beautiful Places in Australia 55The Most Beautiful Bridges 63The Greatest Engineering Wonders 271

From the encyclopaedia

The Sydney Harbour Bridge is a steel through arch bridge in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, spanning Sydney Harbour from the central business district (CBD) to the North Shore. The view of the bridge, the harbour, and the nearby Sydney Opera House is widely regarded as an iconic image of Sydney, and of Australia itself. Nicknamed "the Coathanger" because of its arch-based design, the bridge carries rail, vehicular, bicycle and pedestrian traffic.

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