With constant, heavy traffic in the form of Mack-truck convoys, ASLAVs and M113s, and regular seasonal downpours adding to the load on a relatively poorly built mountain road, this task was a constant battle. Minor land slippages in treacherous mountain passes kept crews busy all along the route and no sooner had one slippage been mended than another section would give way. This constant mend and repair cycle was likened to painting the Sydney Harbour Bridge — it was just something that had to be done and the crews knew there was no end to it as long as the wet season lingered.

One spot on the route held a particular significance for the engineers — the ford on the Loumea River between Suai and Maliana. To the locals the ford was a traditional impasse that saw the route cut for weeks on end with no way around. To the engineers it was a challenge that demanded to be beaten if the MSR was to remain open — and failure to keep the MSR open was not an option.

For almost two months constant improvement to the spillway was all that was required but as the rains increased in regularity and severity with the onset of the wet season, each downpour washing away the good works, something else had to be done. The only answer was a bridge. And who better to build it than the Australian Army’s finest — 3CER.

Bridging the river would not be easy. It was a long time since anyone had pushed a Bailey Bridge across a gap on operations and this site would not lend itself easily to the task. Besides all that, how in the hell can you get a Bailey Bridge all the way out here — assuming you had one in the first place? But the bridge was found, or rather two bridges were found relatively close by on river crossings that didn’t seem to be used much. These were dismantled, air-lifted to their new home and pulled across the gap. Unlike the traditional by-the-book method of pushing a counterbalanced bridge across the gap, this bridge would have to be pulled.

Sgt Robert Bailey says considering the particular-sized gap that had to be bridged — 93 feet — and a very restricted building site, there was no option but to pull. "We didn’t have enough panels to build the bridge long enough to bridge the gap and still have enough for a launching base as well," he says. "In the end we used a cantilever method, where we balanced the majority of the bridge with a counterweight, pivoted it on rocking rollers and pulled it across using a Mack wrecker. We didn’t have too many problems. The weights and the counterbalance were worked out using the Bailey Bridge pams and the methods we used to pull it across were just basic field-engineering principles."

Sgt Bailey says there were very few people in the unit who had had previous experience building a Bailey Bridge. "This is only the second time I have built one and put it in place. The first time I was a lowly digger on the end of a carry handle."

Much of the materials and equipment for the project were sourced locally. Most significantly the bridging material, which was relocated from two other sites by helicopter and the rocking rollers used to launch the bridge were manufactured on site by RAEME craftsmen using local, solid steel, telegraph poles.