Tumut River Flat video, January 2021.
Tumut Plains Road, Junction Bridge.
Junction Bridge.
History
“Annual Public Works reports suggest that work on the bridge commenced in 1893, and was completed by June 1895. According to the plans for the bridge, this structure replaced an older bridge which had been located immediately south (upstream) of the new bridge.
The bridge was named the Shelley Bridge after the wife of Mr. George Shelley, one of the first settlers of Tumut, arriving in 1832. the name Shelley Bridge appears to have dropped out of use until the late 1950s when E. H. Shelley, a grandson of Mrs. Shelley, requested that: ‘The name of our late grandmother should be honoured by having the bridge officially recorded as the Shelley Bridge, in accordance with the wishes of the relatives as indicated at the opening.]
At the time of this request there appears to have been no record of the bridge being named Shelley, but it was listed by the Public Works Department as the Junction Bridge over the Tumut River at Shelley’s. However, Mr Shelley’s request was complied with and action was taken to have signs erected at the bridge, naming it as Shelley’s Bridge.
Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA) maintenance records for the Junction Bridge commenced in 1932, although notes from that year mention previous maintenance works carried out by the NSW Department of Public Works.”……………….
Learn more…………..
Tumut Town History
“Tumut Post Office opened 1 January 1849. A public hospital opened in the town in 1900.[8] After many years of lobbying by the local community, construction of the railway line from Gundagai began in 1901, reaching Tumut by 1903 with the first train arriving on 2 December that year. A further extension was built to Batlow and Kunama from a junction at Gilmore, a few kilometres southwest of Tumut. Train services were progressively reduced in the early 1980s before the final trains to Cootamundra ran in January 1984 before being suspended when flood damage to the line was deemed not economical to repair.
Tumut was one of the ten areas short-listed in 1908 as a site for the Australian Capital Territory. Other locations that were short-listed include Albury, Armidale, Bombala, Dalgety, Lake George, Orange, Tooma, Lyndhurst and Yass-Canberra.[ An earlier vote following inspections of potential sites in 1902 saw the new Federal House of Representatives vote in favour of Tumut as the location for the capital, however the Senate favoured Bombala so no consensus was reached.
The town’s rugby league team competed in the Riverina Maher Cup competition, beginning as a fixture between teams from Gundagai and Tumut under rugby union rules in 1920, before switching to league rules in 1921.”………..
Read on…………..