Bridge of Sighs

One night in January 1975, the zinc-laden freighter Lake Illawarra plowed into the Tasman Bridge, killing twelve motorists and crewmen and severing the main link between Hobart, the capital of Australia's island state of Tasmania, and its eastern suburbs. Next morning, as some 30,000 suburbanites set out for work, they found that the former three-minute commute over the bridge had turned into a pilgrimage of an hour and a half at rush hours, requiring a detour of 33 miles.

A recent study sponsored by the Tasmanian police showed that the collapse of the bridge meant not just a detour but an impressive variety of social and psychological difficulties as well. "Although comparatively minor in loss of life and damage," the report observed, "it presented a problem beyond the capacity of the community to resolve."

For the people of the eastern shore, the bridge had been a taken-for-granted umbilical not only to friends, relatives and jobs, but to schools, hospitals, government offices, banks, lawyers, dentists and even undertakers. The disaster left the community bewildered as well as isolated.

In the six months after the disaster, crime rose 41% on the eastern shore, while downtown rates were falling. Car theft shot up almost 50% in the isolated community, and neighborhood quarrels and complaints rose 300%. With no hospital facilities on the eastern shore, weary general practitioners were inundated with increasingly testy and fearful patients.

The long commute took a heavy toll in morale, according to the report. Tired fathers, worn out waiting for ferries, showed markedly less interest in home life, children, and sex. They often drank more. Their wives made comments like "He's not interested in our marriage any more" and "He's too tired to do anything but sleep." Senator John Marriott warned the federal Parliament of a "significant" increase in the use of tranquilizers on the eastern shore.

Last December the authorities finally completed a temporary bridge that let the routines of life return to normal. One small plus resulting from the loss of the bridge is that the suburbanites have been reading more: with little else to do, eastern shorers joined the library in record numbers.

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