For me, the bridge represents far more than a physical connection between Hobart’s eastern and western shores: it connects me to nature, to the seasons, and to an elemental Tasmania that many of us urbanites scarcely perceive anymore, let alone get to experience so intensely and viscerally.
photographer PEN TAYLER
I’m battling a 30-knot sidewind as I pedal up the ramp that carries me onto the shared pathway across the Tasman Bridge. It’s a northerly, but this is a winter’s morning, so the punishing, catabatic wind brings only numbing cold, the dry air having descended at full pelt from a snowbound Central Plateau.
I’m wearing multiple layers, but still my extremities are chilled to the bone. My eyes are stinging, my nose is dripping, my ears are aching. Not for the first time, I wonder why I undertake this arduous journey when I could simply have driven, or taken the ferry.
Then, as I near the bridge’s apex, I glance skywards and see a white-bellied sea eagle sailing high overhead. On broad, stiffened wings, the bird tilts slightly from side to side, responding to the turbulent air. I dismount to watch it, and instantly, my discomfort retreats. The eagle appears unperturbed by the gale, as it surveys its domain – and, I sense, me – with an air of supreme diffidence. I am in awe. I feel a deep sense of connection with the power and majesty of nature – right here, right now.
In time, the eagle sails on, and I resume my pedalling with renewed vigour. Soon enough, the wind-buffeted bridge is behind me.
. . .
It is hard to believe, but the Tasman Bridge has been serving the motoring public for close to 60 years, aside a two-year interruption in the aftermath of the January, 1975, Lake Illawarra collision. Fifty years on, that tragic event remains so raw for some that the mere thought of crossing the Tasman Bridge is still traumatic. As a cyclist, commuting between Taroona and Rosny, my own use of the bridge covers a mere quarter of that period. Yet among friends and acquaintances, I still regularly encounter disbelief that I would even contemplate such a crossing.
It is true that the narrow, elevated pathway has its hazards, hemmed in as it is by unforgiving metal railings and featuring alarmingly inwards-jutting gantries. It has claimed many casualties over the years, and injury remains a very real risk. There are times, during turbulent weather, when there’s nothing for it but to get off and push. And sometimes I do balk at the prospect, and take the ferry or drive instead.
Yet, through my regular commutes, across the seasons and in weather both fair and foul, I have come to view the 1,400-metre span with a mixture of respect, familiarity and, yes, affection. That is because, for me, the bridge represents far more than a physical connection between Hobart’s eastern and western shores: it connects me to nature, to the seasons, and to an elemental Tasmania that many of us urbanites scarcely perceive anymore, let alone get to experience so intensely and viscerally.
Exposed to those elements, cyclists are, out of necessity, rather more attuned to the seasons than the average commuter encased in a climate-controlled vehicle. There is no better place to experience this than high on the bridge, where pummelling wind, driving rain, bone-aching cold and parching heat are all accentuated. No amount of dressing for the weather can fully cocoon you.
It took me a couple of years to appreciate that one of the bridge’s gifts to cyclists is to offer a choice: once can play the hapless victim and suffer accordingly, or one can embrace the feelings, own them, and revel in their life-affirming qualities. These days, for the most part, I opt for the latter.
From a distance, the graceful arch of the Tasman Bridge belies the fact that it represents the loftiest peak on my commute. While I may rue the exertion involved in the long uphill slog, the views from the summit are breathtaking, encompassing Storm Bay, kunanyi, the lower Derwent Valley, Mount Direction, the Meehan Range and much of Hobart and Clarence. Surely there can be few commuters in the world who get to witness such an extraordinary panorama.
On fine days, the sparkling waters far below can be blindingly bright. Tides and currents sometimes gather foam from a lively sea into serpentine, longitudinal skeins of whiteness. From above, it almost seems as though these serve as traffic lanes for cormorants that commute up and down the river, tangential to my own commute. Sheer vertical distance reduces the birds to elongated, fluttering wisps of darkness against the sun-spangled sea surface.
On mornings in late autumn, when the Bridgewater Jerry snakes its way towards the mouth of the Derwent and all of Hobart’s lower suburbs are fogbound, the bridge’s summit sometimes peeps above the fog, and, emerging into clear blue skies, a cyclist can feel on top of the world. On winter evenings, with the bridge outlined in decorative lights, a looming kunanyi forms a silhouetted backdrop to my return crossing, backlit by the last glows of sunset, offering a reminder that rugged wildness lies immediately beyond the twinkling lights of the city’s western suburbs.
The march of the seasons is reflected in the wildlife as well as in the weather. Late August usually sees the arrival of the first tree martins of spring. These pale-rumped, swallow-like birds dash across Bass Strait on the first warm northerlies, fanning out through the Midlands and then descending the Derwent Valley towards Hobart. My first encounters usually involve small parties hawking for insects and prospecting nesting crevices around the shoreline footings of the bridge. In the ensuing days, they are often joined by welcome swallows, which have made the same journey but either left the Australian mainland a little later or took their time heading south. Dolphins venture up the Derwent at this time of year, too. I recently watched from on high as a pod of at least a dozen individuals headed determinedly upstream. I like to imagine that it was this same pod that was reported from near New Norfolk the following day.
. . .
Summer offers cycle commutes and crossings that fall entirely during daylight hours, and signals a welcome respite from icy winds – usually. I shed layers in favour of shorts and tees – but carry warmer clothes with me, in case the weather turns. That’s because fine summer weather can also deliver cool afternoon sea breezes that whip up whitecaps in the Derwent, and drum up a hazy, salty-scented sidewind in time for my return commute.
Summer also heralds the arrival of parties of greater crested terns, venturing up-river on fishing expeditions with their newly fledged offspring. Unlike their rather less dainty gull cousins, the terns seem to view the bridge as an obstacle that must be flown over rather than under, so I get to see their graceful, buoyant fly-bys from below and to appreciate why mariners of old knew them as sea swallows.
Come the gales of autumn, if I’m resorting to pushing my bike across the bridge, I may spot the flattened remains of short-tailed shearwaters (mutton birds), squashed by traffic. These are probably youngsters that had been on their maiden night-flights from colonies along the fringes of Storm Bay. Instinct should have taken them out into the Tasman Sea, their mustering point for an arduous migration to the farthest reaches of the North Pacific – a journey their parents will have already commenced weeks previously. But, confused by city lights, some are instead funnelled up the Derwent, where they are prone to crash-landing on the bridge. Once grounded, the plump birds seem unable to launch themselves again. For such unfortunates, death by truck, bus or car is a sad inevitability.
Winter, paradoxically, is when the Tasman Bridge really comes to life. Stormy weather at sea pushes flocks of silver and kelp gulls inshore, where they loaf around on the waves below the bridge, appearing as specks of white against the turbid waters. Gannets, perhaps visiting all the way from New Zealand, may venture this far from the ocean, too, torpedoing into the water in pursuit of fish.
At dusk, thousands of starlings wheel in from the suburbs and beyond, to roost on the bridge’s underbelly. They are usually in a jittery frame of mind, often settling for an instant before erupting in a confusion of fluttering wings, performing synchronised aerial sorties that may carry them hundreds of metres out over the river before they return en masse and settle again. They have every reason to be afraid: a peregrine falcon often patrols the skies here at this time of day, ready to pick off weaklings or stragglers in a high-speed stoop from a great height. I think of starlings as unwelcome aliens in Tasmania, but their murmurations, as these sorties are known, are mesmerising, and a sight to behold. So, too, is the stoop of a peregrine, though usually one only catches the blur of motion that comprises the final seconds of action before the power-packed predator either bowls over its quarry in a flurry of feathers, or peels off empty-taloned.
As I leave the bridge, my cheeks now tingling in the glow of a facial massage courtesy of the pummelling wind, I wonder if I will have retired from cycle commuting, through injury or age, before the long-promised safety upgrades to the shared pathways eventuate. I also reflect on how, throughout history, bridges have been pressed into service as metaphors for all kinds of human affairs: bridging divides, troubled waters and more.
To a greater or lesser extent, these are apt descriptors of the role of the Tasman Bridge. But for me, the bridge is no metaphor: it is, literally, a bridge for all seasons.
Dr Simon Grove is a Hobart-based naturalist, zoologist and author. His book, Seasons in the South: a Tasmanian naturalist’s journey of discovery, illustrated by nature artist Keith Davis, was published by Forty South.
