Hay Bridge, New South Wales
bridge in New South Wales, Australia
The Hay Bridge is a road bridge that carries the Cobb Highway across the Murrumbidgee River at Hay, New South Wales, Australia. The first bridge opened in 1873 being replaced by the current bridge in 1973.
Current bridge
The current Hay Bridge is a six-span, reinforced concrete and steel box girder structure supported on steel piles and slender concrete piers. It has an overall length of 194 metres (638 ft) with two 30-metre (97 ft) spans and four 32-metre (105 ft) spans, and is 9 metres (30 ft) between kerbs. A two-metre-wide (five-foot) footpath was provided for pedestrian use.
Each box girder is made up of five cells each two metres (six feet) wide and one metre (three feet three inches) high. The base and walls of each cell are steel plates and the reinforced concrete deck forms the top section. A feature of the design is the cantilever construction of the girders. This allows a greater distance between piers than a simply supported span design.
Hay is located on the Western Plains where the clay and silt deposit can be up to 457 metres (1,500 ft) in depth.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Hay Bridge, New South Wales” as bridge in New South Wales, Australia. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the places & architecture register because the source frames it as bridge in New South Wales, Australia. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q96380428. Authority coordinates are -34.516, 144.842. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1873 and 1973.
Modern boundaries and familiar names can conceal earlier jurisdictions or structures that do not align with the present site. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
- Historic place names
- Jurisdictional context
- Routes into maps and plans
Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Hay Bridge, New South Wales”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Hay Bridge, New South Wales primary sources, Hay Bridge, New South Wales archive and Bridge research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Hay Bridge, New South Wales” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.