BUILDERS of the original Waiohine Gorge swing-bridge in 1989 say its stronger replacement, completed on Friday last week, is a "pretty impressive" structure better suited to the area's hundreds of visitors.
Joe Hansen, from the Wairarapa Department of Conservation, was part of a team of four builders working on the original bridge in 1989.
He said that bridge was fairly high at the time but the new bridge is even stronger "it's pretty impressive".
Mr Hansen said he suspects at Waiohine, "a lot of people only go because of the swing-bridge and just walk across and walk back".
This means the bridge "gets a heap more visitors than a bridge in the middle of nowhere it wasn't designed for hundreds of people".
Mr Hansen said the first of the trickiest jobs in building any bridge is getting "contact on both sides".
Builders of the original bridge threw a nylon string across from both sides, and climbed to the bottom and joined it together at the bottom. That string was used to pull first a heavier rope across and then a wire cable, and from then on equipment and materials and workers went across the valley on a pulley or "flying fox" system.
Building the foundation "was pretty hard digging, with shovels and picks and crowbars. If you know the ground, there were plenty of tree roots and rocks."
Abseil Access, builders of the new bridge, report digging "tower foundations and an anchor block trench 2m deep".
The new suspension bridge is stronger than the original swing-bridge, with the structure supported from above rather than by cables on the side.
The bridge is 124m long over a gorge 40m deep.
New Waiohine Gorge swing-bridge opened
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