He said the 82-year-old structure elicits fond recollections of childhood trips to his family’s shack at Scamander and inspired his final-year project during his degree at the University of Tasmania.

“After they built the new bridge there it (the old bridge) was falling into disrepair and I was interested in revitalising or regenerating it,” Mr Wade said.

The assignment, which was completed in 2001, proposed to transform the bridge into a habitable space like the Rialto Bridge in Venice or Ponte Vecchio in Florence. 

Several years after Mr Wade’s project was completed a developer put forward a similar concept for a 60-room apartment hotel and restaurant with conference facilities, but it never went ahead.

Mr Wade said when the bridge was built in the mid-1930s it was “a grand gesture”.

“For quite some time before that they had punts and various timber structures crossing the river,” he said.

“They did it properly too, it was a big steel bridge and for a coastal town it was quite iconic.”

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Designed by prominent Tasmanian engineer Sir Allan Knight, work began in November 1934 and construction was estimated at £12,000.

“It was cutting edge at the time and is an example of a fully-welded steel structure,” Mr Wade said.

The bridge is the second oldest Pratt truss bridge in Australia, a form first designed in 1884 by father and son Thomas and Caleb Pratt, a pair of American engineers.

It was officially opened in December 1935 by then-Premier Albert George Ogilvie.

According to newspaper reports at the time, Mr Ogilvie said the government was proud of the “tremendous amount of public work” and that the “bridge had been erected for less than the estimated cost and had been completed within the specified time”.

On Tuesday, January 23 the Break O’Day Council will unveil the concept plans for the old Scamander Bridge project and the foreshore.