3-011-917 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Tarradale [sic] Viaduct, on the Melbourne and Sandhurst Railway, Australia, 1864. Engraving from a photograph by Morris and Co., of Elizabeth-street, Melbourne. '... the great northern line from Melbourne to Sandhurst, by way of Castlemaine...is eventually to be carried on to the Murrumbidgee River, and to provide for safe and cheap conveyance between Victoria and New South Wales. The town of Castlemaine, at the foot of Mount Alexander, is already a place of great commercial importance. Its site is well chosen for access to the northern and western gold-fields, as well as to the fertile agricultural plains of the Loddon and the Avoca, which lie behind it. Sandhurst, at the entrance of the Bendigo gold-field, is about twenty-six miles further on, through a picturesque country of grassy meadows and well-wooded hills. The Tarradale Viaduct...is reached before arriving at Castlemaine from the south. It is in the neighbourhood of some very rich quartz reefs, which have been worked so profitably that the roadside station of Tarradale has rapidly grown into a town...The Tarradale Viaduct is about 600 ft. in length and 100 ft. high. Its construction differs in no respect from that of many similar works in Great Britain'. From "Illustrated London News", 1864.