Sydney Harbour Bridge South East Pylon Museum and Lookout

From Cumberland Street you have to go up the bridge stairs to access the bridge level.... or do as we did, take the elevator.  Once on bridge level, we walked the walkway along the side of the road to the southeast bridge pylon.  The walkway was separated from the road by a wall.  The pylon holds a museum, and you can go up to an observation level to look around.

You might have to click on these photos to read them.

 

Sorry the photos aren't in a better chronological order but there's lots of interesting information about the bridge still to come, so read on.

OMG!!

Click on next photo for a description of each of these items. 

This is a dial Gauge.  It was used to measure the bridge movements during load testing in 1932.

Models depicting the hazardous working conditions during bridge construction.

The biggest cost of all.  I wonder how many wouldn't have died if they had been wearing modern safety equipment. 

Finally, we made it to the lookout.  Notice the plexiglass covering half of this marker?  It extended a foot over the top of the parapet. The parapet was capped with copper that had markings showing degrees of a compass.  It looks like this plexiglass was put up because people had scratched stuff into the copper.  What a shame!  But the plexiglass was also inscribed with lines that pointed to different spots of interest in the area.  I didn't get a good photo of them due to the rain drops.

We were on a balcony, and we took photos as we walked around.  This is the view starting at the Opera House.

Circular Quay, where the ferry, tour and cruise boats docked, downtown, The Rocks in the foreground and a sliver of the road that goes over the bridge.

The Rocks... hmm I wonder if we can see the YHA where we were staying.

My sister has a much better camera on her phone, and she was able to take this photo of the patio on top of the building.

The road and the rest of the buildings of downtown.  Darling Harbour is on the right.

This photo shows more of Darling Harbour, the train tracks that run across the bridge, and the southwest pylon. 

The southwest pylon, train tracks and road with a slice of Sydney Harbour

Looking out over the top of the bridge.

Sydney Harbor to the East of the bridge.  The Opera House is just out of view on the right.