Stone Bridge, Lonsdale Street, Dandenong, in 1904.

Looking into Dandenong towards Foster street.

Over the years ‘the rapids of Dandenong’, so described once by the poet Adam Lindsay Gordon, have swept away more than one bridge in the area. The first bridge over Dandenong Creek was constructed in 1840. A flood swept this away ten years later and it was replaced.

The stone bridge, built in 1866, probably by Robert Huckson, lasted 52 years. Part of it was granite, quarried locally from the vicinity of Wedge and Power Streets.

This bridge was replaced in 1919 by a ferrous metal single-span bridge, with concrete deck, known as the ‘Peace Memorial Bridge’. It was designed by R. H. Woolcock, shire engineer,once described as ‘one of the best engineers in Victoria’. Part of the bridge still carries portion of the Princess Highway over the Dandenong Creek. Modern concrete bridges now span the local creeks at many points.

Image courtesy of D.D.H.S.

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