Mount Spec Road and Little Crystal Creek Bridge
| Mount Spec Road and Little Crystal Creek Bridge | |
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Mount Spec Road over Little Crystal Creek Bridge, 2016
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| Location | Crystal Creek, City of Townsville, Queensland, Australia |
| Coordinates | 19°00′00″S 146°15′02″E / 19.0°S 146.2505°ECoordinates: 19°00′00″S 146°15′02″E / 19.0°S 146.2505°E |
| Design period | 1919 - 1930s (interwar period) |
| Built | 1930-1936 |
| Official name: Mt Spec Road and Little Crystal Creek Bridge | |
| Type | state heritage (built, landscape) |
| Designated | 30 October 2008 |
| Reference no. | 602652 |
| Significant period | 1930s (fabric) 1930s-ongoing (historical use) |
 Location of Mount Spec Road and Little Crystal Creek Bridge in Queensland
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| Little Crystal Creek Bridge | |
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Mount Spec Road crossing Little Crystal Creek Bridge, 2016
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| Carries | Motor vehicles, |
| Crosses | Little Crystal Creek |
| Locale | Paluma, North Queensland, Australia |
| Characteristics | |
| Design | Arch bridge |
| Material | Stone-faced Concrete |
| No. of spans | 1 |
| History | |
| Construction start | January 1932 |
| Construction end | June 1933 |
Mount Spec Road and Little Crystal Creek Bridge is a heritage-listed road from Mutarnee to Paluma with a bridge over Little Crystal Creek at Crystal Creek, City of Townsville, Queensland, Australia. The bridge is 61 km north of Townsville and provides access to the Paluma Range National Park. The road and the bridge were constructed between 1930 and 1936 under the Unemployment Relief Scheme during the Great Depression. They were added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 30 October 2008.
Mount Spec Road and Little Crystal Creek Bridge, Crystal Creek, are situated in north Queensland, 61km north of Townsville. Mount Spec Road stretches some 18km from its junction with the old Bruce Highway to the western outskirts of Paluma. It provides access from the coastal plain, just 5km wide in this area, to the Paluma Range, which rises some 1000m above the Big Crystal Creek floodplain. The concrete arch bridge over Little Crystal Creek is a prominent feature of the landscape in this area, and is located about halfway along the Mount Spec Road. The bridge is a very common subject for photography by locals and visitors, and Little Crystal Creek is one of the most popular natural destinations for residents of the city of Townsville.
Lobbying to build the Mount Spec Road took place over some 30 or so years, against a background of philosophical ideas of "progress" and "settlement" and the need for access to the areas west of Paluma for tin miners, timber cutters and farmers ("farmers access roads"), to the Paluma/Crystal Creek area itself for tourists and as a water supply for Townsville. This lobbying and the prolonged debate over the eventual location and construction of the road were also linked with the need to preserve features of the natural landscape. It took place amongst considerable controversy.
The earliest European access to what is now Paluma probably followed Aboriginal pathways, and there were six tracks in the Herbert district in the 1880s and 1890s that provided direct access to Mount Spec. However, only a few of these tracks were suitable for horses; most were foot tracks, and the easiest access to the forest in this area of broken topography was from the west.
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