The Auckland Harbour Bridge is an eight-lane box truss motorway bridge over
the Waitemata Harbour, joining Saint Mary's Bay in Auckland with
Northcote in North Shore City. The bridge is part of State Highway 1 and is
the second-longest road bridge in New Zealand. The main span is 43 meters
above high tide to allow ships free access to the deepwater wharf at the
Chelsea Sugar Refinery.
In the 1950s when bridge plans were finally
realised, North Shore was still a very rural area with barely 50,000 people
living there. Opening up the area unlocked the potential for further
expansion of Auckland.
Based on the recommendations of the design
team and the report of the 1946 Royal Commission, the bridge should have
had five or six traffic lanes with the extra lanes intended to be reversed
in direction in peak traffic, along with footpaths on both sides of the
bridge. However, these features were dropped before construction started
for cost reasons and the then government opted for a four lane bridge
without footpaths.
The bridge took four years to build - with large
steel girder sections partially pre-assembled and then floated into place
on construction barges. One of the main spans was almost lost during stormy
weather when the barge began to drift, but the steam engine tugboat William
C Daldy eventually won a 36-hour tug-of-war against the high winds,
consuming 40 tons of coal during the battle.
The bridge was
completed three weeks ahead of schedule and was officially opened on the
30th of May 1959 by the Governor-General Lord Cobham. The 50 cent stamp
shows an open day held in the week prior to opening where 106,000 people
walked the length of the bridge.
By 1965 the rapid expansion of
suburbs on the North Shore had increased annual use to around 10 million
vehicles - three times the original forecast level and work began on adding
two-lane box girder sections to each side of the bridge. Completed in 1969,
the sections were manufactured by Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries of
Japan and were nicknamed the 'Nippon clip-ons' - attributed to
anti-Japanese sentiment 20 years after the end of the Second World War. Not
surprisingly, the costs of the additions were considerably higher than had
the bridge been designed and built with the extra lanes from the
start.
The Auckland Harbour Bridge has also appeared on stamps in
the
1994 Emerging Years - The
1950s and
2009 Year of the Ox
issues.
The 50 cent self adhesive stamp was produced solely for the
New Zealand Transport Association and was only available to the public
through New Zealand Post Stamps and Collectables.