The West Gate Bridge is a steel box girder cable-stayed bridge in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It spans the Yarra River, just north of its mouth into Port Phillip, and is a vital link between the inner city and Melbourne's western suburbs with the industrial suburbs in the west and with the city of Geelong, 80 kilometres (50 mi) to the south-west.
The main river span is 336 metres (1,102 ft) in length, and the height above the water is 58 metres. The total length of the bridge is 2,582.6 metres (8,473.1 ft). It is the third longest in Australia behind the Houghton Highway and the Hornibrook Bridge, and is twice as long as the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
The bridge passes over Westgate Park, a large environmental and recreational reserve created during the bridge's construction.
Read more about West Gate Bridge: Future, Suicide and Other Deaths
Famous quotes containing the words west, gate and/or bridge:
“There is no human failure greater than to launch a profoundly important endeavour and then leave it half done. This is what the West has done with its colonial system. It shook all the societies in the world loose from their old moorings. But it seems indifferent whether or not they reach safe harbour in the end.”
—Barbara Ward (1914–1981)
“Duns at his lordship’s gate began to meet;
And brickdust Moll had screamed through half the street.
The turnkey now his flock returning sees,
Duly let out a-nights to steal for fees:
The watchful bailiffs take their silent stands,
And schoolboys lag with satchels in their hands.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
“Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down.”
—Paul Simon (b. 1949)