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:
“These emblems of twilight have seen at length,
And the man red-faced and tall seen, leaning
In the day of his strength
Not as a pine, but the stiff form
Against the west pillar....”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“What was dancing to you then?
We went from the high gate away
To a black hill the other side of men
Where one wild stag stared
At the going day.”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“What need the bridge much broader than the flood?”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)