murrumbidgee

Australian Heritage Database - Place ID: 15910 - designed by Sir John Fowler (codesigner of the Firth of Forth Bridge) - fabricated by P W McLellan, Glasgow, Scotland - load tested on 16 December 1880 and placed in service on 23 January 1881 - originally connected together by arched latticed braces, but now replaced with more modern squared braces

Replaced December 2006 -

The photo must have been taken soon after the bridge was completed - it looks shiny and new except for a few soot stains on the arched latticed braces. There are another two images in the series, very reminiscent in style / composition to the bridge at Gundagai Cowra, but ten years earlier. These look too good quality for the early 1880s - investigator.records.nsw.gov.au/asp/photosearch/photo.asp... investigator.records.nsw.gov.au/asp/photosearch/photo.asp...

The Australian Heritage Database entry states that this bridge "was one of the subjects of the 1884-86 railway bridges enquiry". Maybe the photos were taken for the enquiry? Just a thought.

[pretentious comment alert] I wonder if our old friend John Rae was the photographer? In the 1880s he was chairman of the Board for Public Tenders (Works), but would surely have an interest in the longest railway bridge(s) in NSW from his time as Railway Commissioner. Or even a very young John Degotardi Junior (1860-1937) ? The three photos show a strong sense of perspective. [alert over]

No. 11 in the same series - As noted by beachcomber australia, numbers most likely represent 23 February 1931.

Just reading about Joseph Furphy in an article by Dr. Susan Lever from the ASAL, The Study of Australian Literature, published in the Canberra Times Panorama, of April 21, 2012.

I had not made the connection before, between Joseph, Tom Collins, and his brother, the inventor of the "furphy"
And here I am now with Tom Collins book, "Such is Life" down from my bookshelf, and having read the fine introduction by John Barnes, Senior Lecturer in English, University of Western Australia, 1967, where I read that we lived for a couple of years in Dalkeith and Nedlands, and Claremont, where my wife grew up!, not far from Swanbourne, where Furphy died in Sept. 1912! Coming up to 100 years ago!

I am ashamed I had not read the "Certain Extracts from the Diary of Tom Collins" before this. Now retired I will be able to browse my library better....

I will also have to add some details to my Furphy tank shots..
Tom Collins was a bullock team driver up and down the Riverina from Hay, where he left his family, probably in a tent on the Hay Commons, and travelled up the "Long Paddock" on the One Tree Plain delivering stores to stations like "Willandra", past Booligal, Mossgiel, Hillston, and the Lachlan. All places we have travelled, thinking of the old stockmen and travellers along the Cobb and Co stops, but not knowing of Tom Collins's famous descriptions of this area.

He delivered wool to the railhead at Nyngan and back down to the paddle steamers at Echuca and made a good life from it for several years until the drought of 1883.
By the 1890s, drought, rabbits, overstocking, and the depression forced, Furphy to join his brother at his foundry in Shepparton, where they invented the "furphy", and Joeseph was able to settle in a shack and devote time to his writings for the Bulletin.