Donovan's Road bridge, Healesville, VIC, Australia

Donovan's Road is a small side road west of Healesville township, off the main Healesville-Yarra Glen Road.  In fact, I think its official name is "Donovans Road", but I love correct apostrophes a bit too much for that.  It is a pretty short affair, winding its unsealed way between paddocks to a railway line, ending not long after crossing the tracks.  It would be wholly unremarkable if it weren't for one thing: its condemned bridge.

The bridge (and RM 22) as seen from the level crossing.

I'm honestly surprised a bridge was ever built here, since the branch railway to Healesville was constructed in the 19th century, in an era well before massive traffic backlogs behind boomgates and impatient twits speeding in front of trains led to cries of "zomg every road/rail crossing should be grade separated!!!!1!1" and the like.  Donovan's Road is pretty damn trivial, and the planners certainly couldn't be fucked bridging much more significant roads nearby.  And now that we're in this age of "grade separate EVERYTHING!!! and make the damn railways pay for it even though it's only of benefit to road users!!!11!11", the bridge has funnily enough been replaced by an at-grade level crossing.  Not that it's a big deal, since the Healesville branch last saw revenue trains in the 1980s and this section of track only sees a few weekend services run by the good folk at the Yarra Valley Tourist Railway (allow me this opportunity to give their fine restoration work a massive shout-out).

Although the bridge has been superseded, it is by no means gone.  It continues to loom above the railway line, blocked off from road traffic, condemned but nonetheless standing.  I admit I find decaying relics like this simply fascinating.  In its heyday, it would've been a pretty unremarkable bridge - small, of very basic construction, indistinguishable from hundreds of others around the state.  But now that it has fallen into disuse, the forces of nature have worn away at it and given it a rustic, decayed sort of charm with flaking paint, creaky boards, and even a couple of random weeds to drive home the point about its dereliction.

More photos of this and other disused Yarra Valley bridges here.

If more people had any reason to come out this way, I'd wonder if some bloody idiot drink-driving on their way home had ever mistakenly tried to cross the bridge.  It doesn't look like it could really withstand the weight of any decent-sized vehicle!  I certainly wouldn't try my luck, though you could probably get away with one of those Smart cars.  And honestly, even if you re-opened the bridge, it looks like it could go days without traffic anyway ...

Rating: Condemnable by default, since it actually is condemned.  If it weren't, it would not garner such a harsh rating.

Footbridge over Citylink, Brunswick West, VIC, Australia

One day, I headed out for a little stroll around some of the quieter suburban streets north of Albion Street. It was a bit of a dark day, with dark clouds threatening rain on the horizon. Everything was very still, and to be honest I was getting a little unnerved by it all. Imagine how I felt, then, when I followed a grassy little path and came out facing this.


This creepy creepy bridge runs from Peacock Street to McColl Street over Citylink. There is another bridge a little further south that is the same as the Head Bridge in every way except one. The crucial difference is that the Hope Street bridge doesn't have these CREEPY FUCKING HEADS. I inspected the bridge thoroughly and found absolutely no explanation for these heads. No artist name, no commemorative plaque, nothing. Just a whole lot of unnerving stone heads. They seems to all come from the same mould, so it's not like they're supposed to be statues of real people. Then again, I suppose this is for the best - I don't know about you, but I certainly wouldn't want to be immortalised in cracked stone on the walls of a slightly claustrophobic footbridge. This is a fate which I would only wish upon people like Tony Abbott and Justin Bieber, to name but two.

Now, I'm all for a little bit of artwork to liven up the city. I was frequently frustrated with the lack of artwork (or just nice features in general) in Auckland. However, I do not want to be confronted by cracked, blackened, expressionless stone heads when I'm going for an innocent suburban walk. These remind me forcibly of the way that hunters (and my friend Jamie) display deers' heads and the like over their fireplaces. Some of the heads look as though they've been burnt, and others have missing pieces - there's one which lacks a nose. Some of the heads have been defaced as well, which in most cases just adds to the eeriness. The drips of spraypaint on some of the heads make them look as though they're crying (or just emo kids without waterproof mascara).

I've searched far and wide for an explanation of this and have so far found nothing. Still, an explanation wouldn't stop this thing being creepy. I feel sorry for all the poor children who have probably been given nightmares from walking across this bridge. Actually that's a lie; I hate children. Still, this thing creeped the shit out of me, and I had to drag Ax down there as soon as possible to make him believe that I'd actually found such a thing. We went in the late evening, as most of these photos show, and it was even creepier that way. I guess this is what I get for walking down rape-y pathways by myself on dull days. Still, if it wasn't for insatiable curiosity, this blog wouldn't exist in the first place, and what a terrible thing that would be!

Rating: Unpleasant, both in design and in the feeling it gives you.