Creator Charles Bayliss

Date 1889

Charles Bayliss (1850-1897), one of Australia's great nineteenth century photraphers, captured this epic tableau of images fo the Hawkesbury River Bridge under construction, prior to opening in 1889. The bridge was the third largest ever, constructed in the world. It was built by an American firm, the Union Bridge Company of Brooklyn, New York, when American engineering proess was buoyed by recent completion og New York's Brooklyn Bridge in 1883. In Europe, another project built and opened at exactly the same time was the Eiffel Tower. Although the Hawkesbury bridge was more utilitarian in purpose, its elaborate tracery and monumental steel trusses reflect the Eiffel Tower in many respects. ..Bayliss' photos are among the most poetic of the engineering genre, foreshadowing the dramatic visual compostitions of Harold Cazneaux's Harbour Bridge series a few decades later. 'As a landscape photographer' it was said in his obituary, Bayliss 'had few equals and no superiors'. His photography fills the nation's art galleries and museums, not just as compelling historical records, but as true works of fine art...The Americans, who lived in cottages on Dangar Island for the duration of the construction, had a field day with the nomenclature of a bridge that spanned to 'Long Island' and, it is believed, were responsible for the renaming of Hawkesbury River Station to 'Brooklyn'.

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