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Research dossier · Places & Architecture

West Gate Bridge

Cable-stayed bridge across the Yarra River in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Architectural plans, a scale model, maps and brass measuring instruments
Places and architectureInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 19, 2026
Entity authoritySource title only
Source-derived summary

The West Gate Bridge is a steel, box girder, cable-stayed bridge across the Yarra River, north of its mouth into Port Phillip, and Westgate Park, located in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The bridge carries the West Gate Freeway and links Melbourne's city centre with its western suburbs and Geelong, 80 kilometres (50 mi) to the south-west. Opened in 1978, the bridge has formed part of one of the busiest road corridors in Australia; and carried 203,000 vehicles per day, as of November 2023.

Editorial summary

“West Gate Bridge” enters the record as cable-stayed bridge across the Yarra River in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what West, Gate and Bridge can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA valuable geographic starting point for tracing changing names, boundaries, uses and administrative responsibility. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1978, 2023—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around West, Gate and Bridge.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“West Gate Bridge” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, West, Gate and Bridge provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Place names and jurisdictional language are key evidence: both can reveal earlier catalogue descriptions and overlooked record series. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The first chronological checks are 1978 and 2023.

Critical limits

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.

Best used for
  • Historic place names
  • Jurisdictional context
  • Routes into maps and plans
Verify next

Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “West Gate Bridge”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow West Gate Bridge primary sources, West Gate Bridge archive and West research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “West Gate Bridge”?
  2. Which authority defined the place, boundary or structure at the relevant date?
  3. Which earlier names or jurisdictions may reveal additional records?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “West Gate Bridge” 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.