Curio

State Library of New South Wales
Glebe Island Bridge

Glebe Island Bridge

1873
Glass photonegative

Completed in December 1861, the Glebe Island Bridge connected the city to the Edmund Blacket designed stone buildings of Glebe Island Abattoirs. Not surprisingly, Glebe and Balmain residents complained constantly of the smell and the abattoir featured prominently in the 1882 Royal Commission into noxious and offensive trades. The government banned the boiling down of offal in 1883 and eventually the abattoirs were moved to Homebush.

Crossing – by Jill Jones

Bridge is line work, road is line work

and negotiation, with island

water work is weather work.

Image is wet work carried like a package

through light by water

with harbour chemistry, with glassy sun.

Men are there, looking, listing, leaning

with what work and carriage

until they leave the road, the frame

to eat, or get drunk or sit alone

write numbers, read texts in line

until darkness

that here has not come.

In this space, wood and iron

cross the water, leading some way

from what was taken

by steely light.

-  after Glebe Island Bridge - a2825010