Paterson Railway Bridge, Paterson, New South Wales

Built from 1909 to 1911, this railway bridge crosses the Paterson River and leads trains through the town of Paterson, NSW.

The present township of Paterson, situated six kilometres to the north of the original military station at Old Banks, was the third to be surveyed in the Hunter Valley after Newcastle and Maitland, but was not proclaimed until 1833. With the continuing settlement of the district, Paterson soon became an important tidal river port and service centre to the surrounding community. Many early settlers were Scots and hence a Presbyterian Church preceded an Anglican establishment. Indeed, St Ann's, opened in 1842, is said to be the oldest Presbyterian Church on mainland Australia. The river trade began to decline in the 1850s as the road to Maitland improved. Timber mills were established by the 1870s.



In its heyday Paterson had four stores, five hotels, two shipyards, a sawmill, a tannery, four blacksmiths, two butchers, a bakery and a boarding school for girls. Shipbuilding also commenced with the development of the river trade and considerable supplies of tobacco were grown, as well as grains, grapes, wine, citrus fruits and cotton were transported by steamboats to Morpeth, Newcastle and Sydney. Bushranger Captain Thunderbolt's wife, Mary Ann Bugg (one of two known women bushrangers), was tried at the Paterson Court House during the 1860s.



By the time the railway arrived in 1911 the long-term decline of river transportation had taken its toll. With ironic symbolism the railway line passed directly over the wharf and a mishap during the construction of the railway bridge in 1909 sunk one of the local boats, the Anna Maria, which had been contracted to carry the BHP made girders. The boat was salvaged but was nearly destroyed again when a spark from a steam train set it ablaze. The last steam boats visited the area in the 1930s.

The permanent pegging out of the first section of the North Coast Railway Line, from Maitland to Dungog, was commenced in November, 1906, by surveyor H. F. Bode, following in a general way the route of one of the trial lines surveyed twenty years earlier. On February 12, 1908, the first sod was turned near the present Telarah Railway Station by Mr. C. Griffiths, the Minister for Works. The contract was let to Messrs. Carey, Carson and Simpson and work commenced that year. Surveyor Bode, in laying out his routes, kept as far as possible above known flood heights. For this reason his line, on the north side of the Paterson bridge. curved off the present line towards Keppie's "Glenlassie" and back just below the overhead road bridge. back onto the present line.