Looking at some old photos I took of the Westgate Bridge got me thinking about another significant elevated arterial link in Australia, Hobart’s Tasman Bridge, hit by the Lake Illawarra, an iron ore tanker, in 1975. As a young lad the dramatic newspapers pictures were emblazoned on my nascent cultural awareness: two cars hanging precariously over the edge (five had already fallen into the water).

I remember travelling to Tasmania a few years ago partly driven by a desire to inhabit that memory. In the shadow of the Tasman I got chatting to Bill, an old guy who was fishing nearby. Bill told me he was actually fishing under the bridge when the ship hit it back in ‘75. He says he remembers a one-armed man sitting in the back seat of a two-door Monaro that was hanging over the gap in the middle, where the bridge’s midsection had collapsed. A man with one arm? In a car with two doors? Glimpsed through a tiny vehicular window 150 feet in the air? The details seem too sharp, brought too clearly into focus for a 75-year-old man channeling a 30-year-old memory.

But ultimately it doesn’t matter if the one-armed man existed or not (he didn’t, although the car did; I checked the news archives — it was indeed a Monaro GTS hanging over the edge, but the man appears to have had both arms intact)… What matters is the intensity of Bill’s vision, of the dreamlike recollection. It’s mythic, an archetype, a traummaschine beyond theory and reason. Bridges bind communities, bring hopes and dreams; when the Tasman collapsed, Bill said people wanted to tear the whole thing down, as if the bridge had failed them somehow.

I’ve just dug out the notes I took from talking to Bill that day.

Old Bill: “It was like a dream, that whole time. Me son-in-law came and got me and said, ‘The bridge’s fallen down!’ I saw two cars hanging over the edge; one was a two-door GTS Monaro and there was a one-armed bloke in the back of it. You could see the headlights on, and they got dimmer and dimmer as the batteries wore down”.

He waved towards the distance: “You see those navigation lights there under the bridge? And them over there at Sandy Bay? All the captain had to do was steer towards them. Maybe he was pissed or wasn’t at the helm”.

It still affected him, 30 years later.

Old Bill: “There’s a lot of memories from those times. I remember they had to have a ferry joining east and west Hobart for two years while the bridge was being repaired. There was a bar on it and we’d all get pissed. Politicans would have to go on the boat, too, and they’d be in with us workers, so that brought them down a peg or two. One thing it did do was make this side [the east] years ahead in development”.

When it opened in 1964, the Tasman Bridge linked the western and eastern shores of Hobart, instilling palpable community pride. When the bridge fell, those to the east felt the pinch, as Hobart’s major facilities were located on the western shore: hospitals, government offices and schools. But the east became united as a result, forcing the forgotten half of Hobart to fully develop its own business, services and recreational amenities. When the bridge reopened, their inferiority complex had been banished for good.

Bill was a really nice old guy and he’d seen something amazing. He couldn’t forget it. And now he’s transmitted the info virus to me.

I gave him a scare, though. When I first approached him he didn’t hear me and jumped out of his skin. He said I gave him “the shitter”.

I took a photo of Old Bill but the camera jammed.

From that day onwards I resolved to go digital.

Well you would, wouldn’t you?

Even the bridge has gone digital — to avoid a repeat of 1975, ships must now lock onto a laser-lighthouse beam, controlled by computers, to negotiate the space between the pylons.

Meanwhile, under the water, directly beneath the rebuilt midsection, the Lake Illawarra remains, a huge concrete slab pinning it eternally to the bottom.