The Long-Forgotten Bennett Brook Bridge

foreign [Music] so I discovered this through a Facebook Community page of all places I would would have never have guessed it was there otherwise I'm not entirely sure on the history of the location other than it was pastoral lands and now that it's owned by Whiteman Park which is a very popular Conservation Area probably about 20 30 minutes away from here it's not particularly close so I was surprised to see that the land extends that far but regardless the bridge has been there a very long time as you'll see and it's untouched we're only about 15 kilometers away from the Perth CBD so it's not a rural location at all so this is kind of a pilot episode for the channel so if it seems like I don't know what I'm saying it's because I honestly don't know what I'm saying and I can't even find the turn off okay so here we are Guilford Meadows let's go so here we are in the car park for lilac Hill Park which came under the swan Shire Management in 1956 at least as far as my research goes this however is Guilford Meadows which probably up until at least the 1980s was farmland or pastoral lands whatever that means there's a few indications on this gate of what its current state is so I believe this sign is probably out of date so wapc stands for Western Australian Planning Commission so I'm not exactly sure what the connection is there but I believe that the scratched out nature of this sign isn't actually vandalism I think it's just out of date so they've scratched out the phone number and they've scratched out the no unauthorized access now just says authorized active access although that does seem like vandalism I guess this other sign gives us indication of how the land is currently used as you can see there is a Whiteman Park logo there we're not really near Whiteman Park as most people know it as far as tourism goes but this land is connected up by the Bennett Brook which is what our Bridge goes over so as far as I am aware this is public land I don't believe we are trespassing there is this gate but there's certainly no other nothing else stopping us from going in so as we can see here is the original driveway and as we go in we'll see uh at least one structure and maybe a concrete slab how exciting indicate it's passed as pastoral land so from my understanding most of the structures on this land were demolished between 1985 and 1989. but it appears that the structures did change somewhere between 1970 and 1974 if historical aerial photography is to go by at the moment we're standing on some sort of slab which is now used as a Dumping Ground for tree branches and other such rubbish but I believe this was a homestead however it could have been derelict before that fact just judging by the aerial photography I couldn't see any vehicles or anything like that but of course hopefully the sun's not causing that to be too unvisible there's a guy it's pretty cool um but basically we have that shed so let's head over towards that where that four wheel drive is and that golf buggy and uh have a look at the shed so I don't really have any idea why this sole shed has remained when everything else has been demolished but I'm led to believe that that is a fig tree that is growing inside it and out the top so pretty cool not very noteworthy otherwise but yeah look at that the fig tree that could I guess so as we can see we're moving further away from the road so that's West one road there and that is Barker's Bridge it's probably about the last sign of civilization we'll see for a while that's the track we just walked down and we're going to keep following it all the way up to that tree line so as we can see it is quite arduous I guess maybe that's not the right word it's been raining a lot recently it is the middle of winter but as we can see we are coming along the track and all along the track are these olive trees obviously they're not native but they were planted here and I'm just curious as to what exactly this land would have been used for in the old historical imagery you can see that there's some sort of farming activity I'm not exactly sure what some sort of crops maybe probably cows a lot of cows around here even though we are quite close to the city but yeah as we can see there isn't actually any olives on them at the moment when I came here a couple of weeks ago the ground was absolutely littered with just olives that had fallen off so okay well I guess everyone knows what olives looks like but as you can see it is quite an idyllic little track and I'll remind you that we are very close to civilization it does feel like we're in the middle of nowhere at the moment and it'll feel even more like that the deeper in we get but you know the city is only 15 kilometers that way that's a Swan River Running along there Guildford townside just on the other side let's crack on I found some olives like my partner just mentioned I think that the birds have picked all the good ones but obviously I don't as my partner also mentioned there is a lot of olive oil production in this region of wa but I feel like these were placed here for aesthetic reasons to cover the track so that makes me feel like that people did live here at some point I don't think just if it was just farming land straight up people would really go to the effort but as you can see a lot of these trees they do look quite old as you can see so unsure when these were planted but I'd say probably at least 40 to 50 years ago if I were to guess and I know nothing about trees so hopefully the sun isn't cutting off that too much but as we can see there is some activity in this area I'm not sure if that was just to cut down on Weeds but there is active tree planting going on around here like a trillion trees Australia for example basically those websites talking about planting the trees is all the information I can really find on this area apparently we're on top of What's called the nangara water Mound which is vital to the drinking the water drinking Supply in Perth so they're planting a lot of trees around here which is good and it does say on those pages that this place this area was cleared for grazing in the 1930s and 1940s so even though I try to prepare my notes I guess I just forgot to add that so luckily there is phone reception around here like I said we're absolutely not in the middle of nowhere even though it does appear that way but we're making our way down the track and we can see the track is about to end so I'm gonna try and not step on any new planted trees but I was right on closer inspection they are planting stuff here so what does that say the monaria Johnson Swan Bush native broom so like I said I was curious as to what this area was used for originally whether it was crops or cows but looking up that web page before which I will link below it was used for grazing oop I just slipped as I said it's very muddy so another great thing my partner just mentioned she's an absolute Fountain of Knowledge was about the cows the cows were probably adding a lot of bad things into the ground via their poop and just stomping on it so like I said they've they've changed this ownership into Whiteman Park it's it's now all conservation lands which is great which is why the bridge we are getting to eventually I swear just behind that tree line that's why that's still there so this is where the track ends for most people I don't think most are even aware of that bridge you wouldn't know it the road did go all the way through here up until sometime in the 1980s but if you go through the historical imagery it does eventually get more and more overgrown so as you can see there's a bit more nothing more than a walking trail left really but as we head in through these bushes we approached the Bennett Brook and looking at the age of some of these trees you can tell that this has been blocked off from vehicle access for a very long time I think even those off-road vehicles we saw before would have trouble getting in here but here we are the bridge which has been the focus of this video all along I have no idea how old this is the earliest imagery around here is from 1953 and you can see the bridge in that but as you can see the concrete here is quite worn away even though it is flat in this particular spot but the standout feature is of course the two I'm gonna guess Gumtree logs which have been used this one here is quite gone I wouldn't be stepping on that one this one's looking a bit more solid although I would be hesitant to stand on that as well but I just find this amazing right on the Bennett Brook obviously quite full this time of year there is a bigger Lake further that way which seems completely cut off considering how close the civilization we are but I believe there is a lot of bird species and whatnot that live in there's someone coming down on a canoe so I'll let them pass they probably don't want to be in the video okay so the woman in the kayak has turned around not sure if she knew the bridge was here or not I'm surprised to see her honestly she would have had to canoe quite a distance from the Swan River to get down here but let's take a closer look at this bridge neither of us are game to walk across it across there we have the suburb of Lockridge and I'll be honest I'm happy to be on this side of the bridge I don't really want to go over there someone was murdered in Lockridge a couple of weeks ago so I think I might stay on this side of Bennett Brook but if we get a closer look and here we can see all these like nails and it's all pretty gnarly it looks very old the track does look a bit more complete on that side of the river uh Brook sorry not river although it is a pretty wide Brook um judging by the aerial photography it just goes through this bush land and pops out the other side into the suburbs does look like there was some activity in that Bushland in previous years looked like there was a Tafe or some sort of complex like that up until about 20 odd years ago but maybe that could be a video for another day but I'm not too interested in heading over there today but obviously this is the star of the show so there's not really anything of historical interest specifically for this bridge but what I find interesting is the fact that it is here after all these years possibly 60 70 80 plus years going back to the 30s and 1940s the fact that it's had so much go on around it all the development of Perth and the immediate suburbs none of that was around when this bridge presumably was originally built and I do find that fascinating I think it's great that they're using this land for conservation now and it's great that there's been no vandalism it's all just natural Decay and I think that's great so yeah that's it for the first episode on this channel which I'm probably going to call Brendan's Odyssey honestly I'm not too sold on the channel name yet but we'll see hopefully it will grow on me like I said in the intro this is a Pilot's episode of sorts but I do have a big long list of things around the perf immediate Perth era area area sorry area and then off into the more rural areas as well there's a lot of cool things around here which I think should be captured and broadcast to the outside world so if you are interested in that sort of thing please consider subscribing hitting the like button so the YouTube algorithm does its thing and shows it to other people and hit the bell and all that but otherwise I'm Brendan this is Brendan's Oddity and thank you so much for watching [Music]

Channel: Brendan's Odyssey

Views: 3,415

Keywords: exploration, urbex, abandoned, bridge, Guildford, meadows

Id: cecBHoW_kPk

Length: 12min 53sec (773 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 25 2023