Bolte Bridge
Cantilever motorway span over a river, once nearly too low for a round-the-world yacht fleet.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Bolte Bridge in Melbourne opens on the 2006 Volvo Ocean Race, when a fleet of racing yachts with masts taller than the bridge's clearance sailed toward the Yarra with no way to lower the span and no easy way to shorten a mast. A yacht designer and a marine engineer had to find another way through. Look up at the twin towers rising beside the span, opened in 1999 and named for Victoria's longest-serving premier, built purely for visual balance.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Webb Bridge
Undulating steel footbridge shaped like a giant Indigenous eel trap, its laser-cut panels glowing over the river at night.
Southbank Promenade
Riverside walkway along the Yarra lined with cafes, performers and a bridge of moving sculptures.
Yarra River
Muddy waterway winding through the city, named from a translation mix-up over a vanished waterfall.
Polly Woodside
Restored eighteen-eighties iron barque that rounded Cape Horn sixteen times, moored in a dry dock.
Ponyfish Island
Floating pontoon bar tucked beneath a pedestrian footbridge, surrounded by river on every side.