Adelaide Reif

The Sandridge Bridge sits over Melbourne’s Yarra River at a point where salt water from the ocean and freshwater from inland intermingle. A sacred space for the indigenous people of the area, the bridge is at once a symbol of the past, the present, and the future. With its wide thoroughfare the bridge is also the creation of a new public space. A place where people can walk, run, gather and watch the Yarra floating by.

The Sandridge Bridge was built in 1888 by David Munro, with the help of Sir John Monash. It was a rail bridge that serviced the line from St Kilda to Port Melbourne until it was decommissioned in 1987 and left to rust. In 2005, an $18.5 million redevelopment was funded by the City of Melbourne and the Victorian State Government. Today, 128 screens of clear glass information panels span the bridge recording the immigration history of Victoria.

The bridge is also home to The Travellers, an exhibition of the work of Nadim Karam, a Lebanese sculptor, artist and architect. The Travellers comprises ten gigantic steel sculptures that reach a height of 7.5m. As a whole, the sculptures represent and narrate the tale of Victoria’s migration waves. Through the gaps in the sculptures, Karam has created a window to Victoria’s multicultural heritage.

The sculptures sit atop the bridge, catching the light at all times of the day. Each sculpture is a symbol of a period of migration: the sculptures speak of the waves of people who have arrived in Melbourne by boat and who have carried their futures across the Sandridge Bridge into an unknown world.

Karam acknowledges the perpetual presence of indigenous Australians with the sculpture Gayip. Embedded in rock it stands on the south bank of the river. Created in collaboration with aboriginal artist Mandy Nicholson, Gayip is the anchor for the bridge, a guide to the beginning of the habitation of the land and a starting point for the future.

The nine sculptures on the bridge are able to slide back and forth on individual bogeys. Fixed but transient, the sculptures change the face of the river just as flows of migration change the face of Australia. Among the sculptures, Technoman represents the technology boom of the 1990s which made communications easy and accessible, and which moved our society forward into the fast-paced life we know today. Another sculpture, the Running Couple, offers a sense of hope for the future, but also a sense of loss, and leaving behind the familiar for something new and unknown.

In many ways the Sandridge Bridge connects an old Australia to a new one. In Victoria, migration continues to bring new life and new cultures, enriching our community with the diversity it celebrates. Karam’s use of symbols to represent this diversity enables individuals to interpret and understand the sculptures, and Victoria’s social landscape, in their own way. The sculptures are at once inclusive of all people and responsive to the distinct ideas and beliefs of a diverse people.