names of hills bridges etc on the old hume.

Whale
Would have been a couple of years now time sure goes when you are having fun

geoff changed a bit repainted big flat screens pool tables load music bands on a friday night i must be getting old whale

It has become fashionable to have three names at every bridge now: the highway, the watercourse and the bridge itself (often after a local identity).
One which must stick out from the old Hume is Union Bridge and Lincoln Causeway. The naming of the bridge is easy to recognise; I don't know the source of the causeway name, and whether it came with the original bridge (unlikely), but if not: when?
* Albury - Wodonga 1 (1861, Union Bridge, wooden, demolished 1898)
* 2 was a temporary railway bridge; 3 was the permanent one, still there.
* Albury - Wodonga 4 (1898, Union Bridge, wooden; out of use 1961; demolished 1973)
* Albury - Wodonga 5 (1961 Union Bridge, concrete; widened 1990)
Surely that would be a memorable landmark on the journey: not just the long trek through the straggling city, but a state boundary, changed rules, and a fruit-fly check. Before federation, it was also a customs post. It may have been the first fixed bridge over the Murray, but was beaten by a pontoon bridge at Echuca.
Somewhere I have a reference to an average of three horses/vehicles per day crossing the punt as at 1840: even then, the nation's busiest interstate road/highway.

From the excellent website put up by what was then NSW RTA:
Murray River at Albury was first explored and crossed by Europeans in 1824 and settlement began in 1835. The mail route from Melbourne to Yass and thence to Sydney from 1837 onwards crossed the Murray by the Mungabareena ford at Albury and in the 1840s a simple ferry was operated by one of the Bangerang Aboriginal people. Sheep and cattle stations rapidly developed and the opening of the Ovens and other Victorian goldfields in the early 1850s created a lively market for beef and lamb. The vehicular punt which had replaced the original dugout canoe was insufficient for the heavy traffic from the Albury district into Victoria...Kidd and Brickell, completed the wooden Union Bridge in Sept.1861. This was a double queen truss bridge, 78 m long. Tolls were payable and for much of the 19th century, customs dues were also exacted at each end of the bridge...The Customs House at the Albury end was not closed until 1915...The road bridge of 1861 was demolished in 1898 and replaced by the second Union Bridge, built by I B & W Farquharson in redgum, ironbark and tallow-wood. The Great Southern Road in both NSW and Victoria was developed and improved: in 1928 it became Hume Highway, named after the man who crossed the Murray at Albury in 1824. The present Union Bridge was built by DMR in 1961. The second bridge was allowed to remain, just upstream, but, despite local efforts to preserve it as part of Albury's heritage, was demolished in 1973. In 1990 RTA widened the carriageway to four lanes.
Union Bridge is a prestressed, precast concrete-girder bridge four lanes wide across Murray River at Albury. The main axis of the bridge is east-west. There are three spans with concrete blade piers supporting the precast prestressed concrete girders. The bridge has a concrete deck and walkway. With the blade piers, provision has been made for future widening. Each span is 30.45 m and the bridge has a clearance over normal water level of 7.31 m, and 2.13 m over the 1867 flood level.
Since the website was written, the bypass has been opened, incorporating a new bridge 'Spirit of Progress Bridge'.
I was at Wodonga in 1972, and saw the second bridge, but never did photograph it. I recall strongly the choked traffic on the current bridge, and later the work on its widening.

Roderick B Smith
Rail News Victoria Editor

as someone from Berrima i would have thought the old truss bridge would have rated a mention
I have pulled a few blokes out of semis with wheels up in the late 60's early 70's Most were nothbound at the time
The post office corner also caught out a few but then a lot used to stop for the surveyor general next door.
cheers
Howard

The other major thread, which is where I am adding my research progressively, starts at
www.hcvc.com.au/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1356249035/0

Roderick B Smith
Rail News Victoria Editor

Originally posted by mel_blunden
Any of you blokes remember the names on the hume such as the cullerens, turkey town, steps & stairs, carbon black,
biscuit bridge, conroys, three legs o man, sydney harbour bridge, aeroplane, pretty sally, beveridge bunker hill. there is lots more that that you blokes will remember from back in the mist of time.
gus.

I had always thought that the bridge near the Tumut turnoff was the 'Little Sydney Harbour'...

When it comes to other places, on the might Hume there is a Hovell's Creek (or Hovell Creek?), around Breadalbane or the Cullerin Range somewhere unless I'm getting nicely confused.

I know you can still see the bridge (or culvert) over it from the new Freeway.

The other incidence of Hovell's name (remember, this highway follows the path Hume and Hovell walked) along the highway is in Wodonga where there's a Hovell Street goes off just across from the old tram.

Who remembers how dead the township of Bowning always looked?

And you could open this all up by going back to the days when the Hume entered Albury along the Riverina Highway. That was before the Hume Weir was built up and the highway went off somewhere around Tabletop and followed straight down through Wirlinga to meet up with the Riverina Hwy about three or four miles east of the town. It ran parallel with Orphanage Lane but to the east of it.

So the route in from Tabletop to Wodonga now is actually the third route the highway has followed in seventy years.