SYDNEY HARBOUR BRIDGE TOKENS AND MEDALS

PREV ARTICLE NEXT ARTICLE FULL ISSUE PREV FULL ISSUE

V24 2021 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 24, Number 12, March 21, 2021, Article 29

Regular readers know that my non-numismatic interests include the history of business, science and technology, and that includes great engineering achievements like the laying of the first transatlantic cable, and important bridges, tunnels, etc. This article on the Australian Coin Collecting blog is an interesting read about the building of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, illustrated with many commemorative numismatic items. Here's an excerpt, but be sure to see the complete article online. -Editor

The bridge officially began construction on July 28th 1923 with the turning of the first sod at an official ceremony in Milson’s Point. This was 10 years after the Sydney Harbour Bridge project was first planned and over a hundred years after the first ideas were raised to build a bridge linking the Central Business District to the North Shore of Sydney. The government, through a tendering process worked through twenty proposals from six companies for the construction of the bridge awarding the contract to British firm Dorman Long and Co Ltd.

Calculations for the designs of the bridge filled 28 books and, in the end, it cost more than 10 million pounds to build the bridge (10,057,170 pounds, 7 shillings and 9 pence to be exact). This is just under a billion dollars in todays money.

The Sydney Harbour Bridge, affectionately known as The Coathanger because of its arch-based design extends 1,149 metres from one side to the other. The arch spans 503 metres with four pylons standing 89 metres above sea level. Interestingly these four pylons serve no structural purpose and are a decorative feature only. It took 95,000 cubic metres of concrete and 17,000 cubic metres of granite stone to make the bridge. Steelwork weighing 52,800 tonnes is held together by around about 6 million rivets.

Here we have one of those rivets, or at least a slice of a rivet that was surplus to use in the bridge. These commemorative medals were struck on planchets made from slices of the excess steel rivets made by McPhersons P/L of Melbourne. It’s not known who was responsible for these but this example comes from the collection of a very good friend who saw my face light up when I saw he had one of these hard-to-find medals in such good condition.

Construction began from each side until meeting in the middle, this milestone reached 19th August 1930 just shy of 2 years after the arch construction began. In this afternoon the two halves met but celebrations were short-lived because expansion and contraction of the metal caused the bridge to separate again. They were rejoined later that evening. The tokens seen here were made at the time to commemorate the event and were sold at Noble Numismatics.