Stage Effect
Sydney Morning Herald
Tuesday March 19, 2002
We don't know who built the first bridge. It might have been a Stone-Age hunter throwing a log over an African stream or a prehistoric inhabitant of the Himalayas using vines as a crude rope bridge over a deep ravine.
What we do know is that bridge builders have always been in the forefront of human progress, for what is a bridge but a statement of hope: the physical embodiment of our determination to find release from the confines of nature?
So it is with our bridge. Other bridges may be older, longer, higher, more graceful. But none has imposed itself so much upon a city, a nation - and now the world - as the Sydney Harbour Bridge in the brief 70 years of its history.
Great bridges are more than mere crossings. They are ornaments, as indicative of the souls of the cities they grace as any cathedral or palace. Think of the Rialto and the Bridge of Sighs in Venice. Prague's Charles Bridge or Budapest's Chain Bridge. The Ponte Vecchio in Florence. Bristol's Avon Gorge bridge. San Francisco's Golden Gate. Yet which of these has shaped a city more than the construction we dismiss affectionately as "the coathanger"?
Shirley Fitzgerald, historian to the City of Sydney, says we forget how dramatically the bridge redefined Sydney. "Before it was built, there really was a huge divide between the two sides of the harbour. That divide has broken down now, although some old people still believe you haven't got to Sydney until you're south of the bridge.
"The bridge shifted the focus of Sydney to the harbour itself. The harbour became our piazza. In the 19th century people weren't nearly so focused on looking out towards the harbour or valuing harbour views as we are today."
For that reason, she believes the bridge is much more significant to the people of Sydney than the city's other great internationally recognised symbol, Joern Utzon's Opera House. In particular, when the bridge was being built at the height of the Depression - its soaring fingers reaching out into the sky, like Michelangelo's fresco of Adam reaching out to God - the emerging bridge came to symbolise the prospect of a brighter future. [While Utzon's masterpiece is one of the wonders of the 20th century, it had less mpact on our lives.]
Chris Johnson, the NSW Government Architect, takes a more prosaic view, arguing that it is not the bridge but the harbour which makes the Sydney Harbour Bridge so special. "The shape of our bridge is not unique. It happens to be very beautifully done and it's a very big version of a particular type of bridge. What makes it different is its setting, right next to Circular Quay at the point where the harbour suddenly narrows.
"If the same bridge had been five kilometres to the west, it wouldn't have the same impact." Worse still, imagine the same bridge without water beneath it. Or a different stretch of water. "The size of the harbour is aesthetically perfect. If it had been 10 times bigger, like San Francisco Bay, you would have hardly been able to see the other side. If it was smaller, say like the Seine, it just becomes a bridge over a river.
"But our harbour is a perfect size for it to be seen as our town square." And, just as the great cities of the world tend to have their most beautiful buildings around their squares - he cites St Mark's Square in Venice - "the major monuments which are part of our town square are the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge".
More recently, he says, the bridge has encouraged a "chain reaction" of high-rise development which "ripples out" from the bridge to Central Railway Station on one side and North Sydney on the other, "accentuating the theatricality of its position". Whether by accident or design, the bridge has helped our city "come together like a stage set".
Since 1996, Ignatius Jones has been responsible for the annual New Year's Eve fireworks display that has given our bridge a higher international profile than ever. The bridge, he says, means a lot more to the people of Sydney than the Opera House.
"Most Sydney people would go to the Opera House once a year, at most. But they use the Harbour Bridge all the time. It is theirs. It's fraught with symbolism because it absolutely dominates the city it is part of, the city it joins the two halves of.
"Simply in terms of its theatricality, you couldn't ask for anything better. Here is the world's largest stage and the bridge is its proscenium arch. But the most amazing thing is that it is the proscenium arch of a stage in the round. It works from both the east and the west.
"Ours is the people's bridge. Who opened the Opera House? The Queen. Who opened the Harbour Bridge? A new Australian, Captain de Groot, flouting authority in a typically Australian gesture."
Now, thanks to the fireworks - and BridgeClimb - the bridge is more famous around the world than it has ever been. To countless millions, wherever television sets are found, the bridge - rather than the ball in Times Square - has become synonymous with New Year's Eve, and therefore with the abstract ideas the night conveys. Hope. Survival. New beginnings.
"I know it sounds cliched," says Jones, "but it bridges the past and the future." Never was that more obvious than 11.59pm on December 31, 1999, when, whatever pedants may say, the people of the world prepared to welcome a new millennium. A minute later, the word "Eternity" adorned the bridge - the enigmatic motif of a Sydneysider from the past giving fresh inspiration to new generations. Rather like the Sydney Harbour Bridge itself.
© 2002 Sydney Morning Herald