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New Zealand Historic Places Trust - Pouhere Taonga

Spanning Time

From Heritage New Zealand, Winter 2009

Photo essay by Shelley Howells, captions:Megan Hutching

Those involved in the life of one of Auckland's most recognisable landmarks will be sharing their memories as it celebrates a significant birthday.

After numerous reports, proposals and a Royal Commission in 1946, work finally began on the four land bridge in September 1955.

654-8, Special Collections, Auckland City Libraries

This photograph, probably taken from Northcote wharf, shows the steel framework of the bridge creeping out from its northern anchorage on Northcote Point. Excavations for the foundation of this began in September 1956. Two 9m-deep holes that carried the anchorage supports were filled with concrete to a height of 3m above ground. Altogether 3000 tonnes of concrete were poured to make the northern anchorage.
Once it was completed, the steel framework was built out to pier 1, the first support for the bridge from the north, which can be seen here with a floating crane on a barge at its base. The steel framework rests on temporary steel legs, on the extreme left of the photograph, which were removed when the span was completed. The piers – there are six of them altogether– were built using prefabricated steel caissons sunk to the harbour floor where they acted as foundations for the piers.
Men worked at the bottom of the caissons in compression chambers, digging down until they reached bedrock. Once this was reached, the caissons were filled with concrete. They were so deep that workers sometimes got the bends when they came back up to the surface. A special decompression chamber was used on each of the caisson work sites.

In November 1958 the trickiest part of the bridge construction was successfully completed. The steel framework that reached from piers 2 to 3 had been built on top of the piece between piers 5 and 6 on the southern end of the bridge. On Saturday 29 November, barges were manoeuvred between piers 5 and 6 and, with the help of a rising tide and winches, both sections were lifted up and out. Then the wind got up so the barges were moored in the harbour for the rest of the weekend. When the wind dropped the barges were moved between piers 2 and 3 and the steel framework was connected to the piers. The barges then returned to piers 5 and 6 and that piece of steel framework was also connected. Thousands of people watched this difficult operation from both sides of the harbour.

Workers on the steel framework of the bridge needed a good head for heights. There was one fatality, when a steel worker fell to his death not long before the bridge opened. Around 300 men, many of whom were specialists from overseas, worked on the bridge as carpenters, fitters, boilermakers, electricians and steel erectors. The last were responsible for building the intricate steel framework, seen here in the arch that rises in the centre.

Even while the bridge was being built, it was thought to be too small and that proved to be correct. Before the bridge was opened, North Shore motorists had to use the vehicular ferry at Devonport to travel south or drive around through Riverhead at the upper reaches of the Waitemata Harbour. The bridge made travel much easier and opened up the North Shore which then developed rapidly, changing from a holiday destination with pockets of settlement to a collection of modern suburbs.

Increased traffic led to the building of two extra lanes on each side of the bridge. Manufactured by Japanese contractors, these were nicknamed “Nippon clip-ons”. Motorists continued to use the bridge while the clip-ons were being attached and they were opened to traffic in 1969.

Fifty years later the bridge still carries eight lanes of traffic, with access to lanes from the north or south controlled during the morning and evening rush hours by a moveable central barrier.

Like Sydney’s, Auckland’s bridge was to be funded by tolls. The toll plaza with its booths was originally planned for the southern end but ease of traffic management made the northern side more suitable. The toll booths can be seen with drivers lining up in front to pay the two-shillings-and-sixpence toll. Buses and trucks were charged a larger amount. By August 1960 sufficient numbers of vehicles had crossed the bridge to allow the Auckland Harbour Bridge Authority to reduce the tolls. They were eventually abolished on 31 March 1984.

A week before the bridge opened for traffic at 3pm on 30 May 1959, thousands of people were allowed to walk across it. There were many festivities to mark its opening. The official ceremony took place on the toll plaza with 100 invited guests. Lord Cobham, the Governor-General, Walter Nash, the Prime Minister and Sir John Allum, Chairman of the Harbour Bridge Authority and driving force behind the building of the bridge, gave speeches, then the Governor-General became the first person to drive across. A crowd of 10,000 people at Point Erin Park and Westhaven watched him arrive on the southern side. By 3pm on 30 May 1960, one year after it opened, 4,924,963 vehicles had crossed the bridge.

Winter 2009

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Spanning time

The view from historian Megan Hutching's inner-city apartment is a sparkling eyeful of city and sea with – slap bang in the middle – the Auckland Harbour Bridge. It’s a constant reminder of her latest oral history assignment. Megan is collecting the stories of those involved in the life of the bridge which is about to mark the 50th anniversary of its opening on 30 May 1959.

“It is partly because of the view, seeing it there all the time, and with the anniversary approaching that I came up with the idea,” says Megan who, when we spoke to her, was about to begin interviews for the project. It’ been funded by a grant from the Australian Sesquicentennial Fund administered through the Ministry for Culture and Heritage and she will be recording the stories of 10 people involved with the bridge from planning and construction through to its present day-to-day life.

“I’d like to find a mix of people – engineers, construction workers, people who worked in the toll booths, those involved with the clip-ons [the four extra lanes added in 1970],” she says. “Also those who work on it now, like the maintenance crew who are constantly painting it, plus someone in administration.”

How do you begin such a project? Slowly, the old-fashioned way: lots of letters to organisations such as the Institute of Professional Engineers and the Transport Authority, following up contacts they might provide who then pass on their contacts.

Ideally, word of mouth takes off and people begin to contact her. Megan approaches potential subjects in writing then follows up by phone but the interviews are done face to face. “You get a much better interview in person.” Some interviewees take quite a shine to the process and others get stage fright.

“The other day I interviewed a woman who told me she hadn’t slept for two nights she was so nervous about it. I always explain that it won’t be like being on Morning Report – it’s not like being grilled by Sean Plunket! It’s not a conversation because there won’t be a lot of me in it but it is a relaxed interview.

After all, what they’ve done is interesting and they know things no one else knows. I tell them that they won’t have to just sit there and talk for hours; I’ll be asking questions. I’m careful to remind them that it will be recorded and it will be archived.”The original recordings for this project will be held at the Alexander Turnbull Library and there will be a copy at Auckland’s Museum of Transport and Technology.

Megan likes to meet her subjects before the recording. “The preliminary meeting without the recorder is just gold. It gives you the chance to see what they’re like and gives them the opportunity to find out what you want to know and what the process will be like. It also gets them thinking about the topic and their memory starts working.” A few days after that first meeting, Megan goes back for the recorded interview. Usually during those few days the memories have begun to bubble up.

“Memory’s a bit like yeast; it works away in the background and eventually things pop up.” Interviews take around three hours. “It can be exhausting for them – me too. People aren’t used to talking for that length of time. Sometimes, depending on age and health, we break it into two or three sittings although I prefer to do it all at once because you build up momentum.”

After the interview Megan compiles an abstract, a time-coded content summary that is a detailed index of the recording. The abstract, the recording and a signed agreement form (which occasionally includes conditions on access) will join more than 10,000 others in the Oral History Centre collection of the Alexander Turnbull Library. This project should be done and dusted by the end of June. In the meantime, Megan admits that she has become “very boring about the bridge”.

As we stand at her window looking across the city to the stout, middle aged Auckland icon, we try to decide if it’s beautiful. “It can be,” says Megan emphatically. “It’s lovely when the sun comes up and shines on the concrete pillars. We take it for granted now but it was a huge project and made an enormous difference to how Auckland has developed. I think we should celebrate it.”