How Sooning is Now? Broken bridge built back stronger.

Nelly Bay's Sooning Street Bridge effectively did a simple yet vital job for the Magnetic Island community: keeping it connected and functioning.

For years, it carried residents, students, tradies, tourists and emergency services safely over Gustav Creek. 

However, severe weather events during the 2024-25 disaster season, made that job impossible. 

Heavy rainfall and raging floodwaters in late December 2024 cracked and damaged the underlying culvert and pipes.

Further torrential rain and flooding in early 2025 completely ruined the structure, leaving it damaged beyond repair and falling into Gustav Creek. 

For an island community, a broken bridge isn't just an inconvenience, it's a chokepoint.

Sooning Street’s closure meant delays, long detours, and reduced access for emergency vehicles. 

However, help was at hand from the Australian and Queensland governments’ Disaster Recovery Funding Arrangements (DRFA).

Through contractors BMD, Townsville City Council delivered a crucial project to bring the broken bridge back from the brink.

But this was no simple like-for-like replacement. 

Indeed, the 18-month project provided a chance to re-engineer the crossing for the conditions it will face in future, making it stronger and safer.

Building a new 38 metre bridge to modern standards requires significant resources and the numbers behind the project tell their own story:

• 1,430 tonnes of concrete, including piles and deck beams
• 624 tonnes of locally sourced ready-mix concrete
• 579 tonnes of precast deck units and 228 tonnes of precast piles
• 340 linear metres of concrete piles driven into the creek bed
• 128 tonnes of reinforced steel across the structure, formed elements and fixtures
• 360 tonnes of asphalt for the road surface.

Altogether, it's a $20 million investment reflecting both the technical demands of building over a waterway and the priority placed on getting it right the first time for the benefit of all.

In a deliberate nod to Magnetic Island's marine ecosystem and the reef waters it feeds into, the finished structure incorporates fishways, allowing marine life to continue moving through Gustav Creek undisturbed by the bridge above.

Additionally, a new footbridge delivered as part of the project gives pedestrians, including Magnetic Island State School students, a safer, separated route.

Rather than steel and timber, the footbridge uses 14 tonnes of composite non-corrosive material developed by Townsville-based Wagners Composite Fibre Technologies.

This lighter, longer-lasting structure represents innovation built into a disaster recovery project, replacing what would otherwise have been 53 tonnes of conventional materials.

With the new bridge now open, Nelly Bay's transport link is restored. 

Emergency services now have access to the entire island, businesses dependent on tourism and resident traffic have their access back, and families don’t have to navigate around a missing crossing.

Standing as a marker of what coordinated federal, state and local government investment can deliver, the new Sooning Street Bridge is also a reminder of the importance a single piece of infrastructure can have for island communities.