Most readers will be aware of the Burnt Bridge Creek Deviation or Bypass at Balgowlah. Many will be aware that it is named for Burnt Bridge Creek, which the bypass route largely follows.
The creek runs from Seaforth down to near the intersection of Condamine Street with Kenneth Road, and then on to Manly Lagoon.
But why is it called Burnt Bridge Creek?
In 1827, James Jenkins applied for the loan of four convicts and permission to build a road from near today’s North Harbour Reserve to his property at today’s Collaroy. He finished the job in three months, including the construction of 13 bridges over various creeks that lay along its route.
Condamine Street follows Jenkin’s original route and the first of those bridges was across an unnamed creek at the bottom of the hill as the road ran down from Balgowlah – the creek that can still be seen today beside the Freedom Furniture store.
Fast forward 23 years and in late January 1850, according to a newspaper report, a fire started on the northern side of Middle Harbour, ‘a few miles seaward of Hillary’s ferry’. The ferry involved was presumably Ellery’s rowboat service at The Spit – later a punt. Fanned by westerly winds, the fire spread north and east, burning all the way to the ocean coast at Manly.
Jenkin’s Balgowlah bridge was in its path and did not escape unharmed. The extent of damage to it is not known, but it was apparently sufficient to give the anonymous creek a name – Burnt Bridge Creek.
