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AAP
AAP
National
Abe Maddison

'An inch, and we were gone': bridge disaster remembered

Tom Lewis Ethan James FB Hobart Tasman
The Tasman Bridge collapsed on the evening of January 5, 1975, after being hit by a bulk carrier. (HANDOUT/OFFICE OF TASMANIAN ARCHIVES)

In the darkness ahead, crewman Graham Kemp saw the Tasman Bridge suddenly looming up ahead on Hobart's River Derwent, as the captain of the Lake Illawarra tried desperately to change the bulk carrier's course. 

It was 9.27pm on January 5, 1975, and less than two weeks after Cyclone Tracy had decimated Darwin, another disaster was about to stun Australia.

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