Melbourne’s newest walking and cycling bridge along the Yarra River, named the Jim Stynes Bridge in honour of the late footballer, has opened.
Planning Minister Matthew Guy and Lord Mayor Robert Doyle joined Stynes’ wife Samantha and children Matisse and Tiernan to mark the bridge’s first day of operation.
The bridge was formally opened by Tiernan, who ran through a banner built by the Melbourne cheer squad that read ‘‘Jim’s Bridge’’.
Tiernan had on Stynes’ old number 37 jumper – which the footballer wore the day he ran through the mark in the 1987 preliminary final, helping Hawthorn win the game with a kick after the siren.
That moment is now seen as having strengthened the Irish-born ruckman’s resolve and drove him on to a 264-game career with the club – including the 1991 Brownlow Medal, and a record 244 consecutive games.
The innovative 120-metre-long pedestrian and bicycle bridge cost $15 million, and creates the illusion it is hovering unsupported above the Yarra.
It joins for the first time a forlorn section of the Yarra River, behind the old Mission to Seafarers on Flinders Street, to Docklands.
Sam Stynes said her late husband would have loved having a bridge named after him.
‘‘A bridge is a literal and visual representation of a journey … a passage to overcome obstacles,’’ she said. ‘‘If I heard Jim say ‘journey’ once, I heard it a million times. He was all about personal journey.’’
‘‘Jim’s journey as a young Irishman coming to Melbourne, to becoming a professional Aussie Rules footballer,’’ she said, to the ‘‘journey we embarked on together to create our family, and finally his journey in and through cancer’’.
Ms Stynes said she and her family would view the bridge ‘‘as a connection to the man we miss and love, and a memory of the journeys we took with him, the journeys he pushed us to take individually, or to contemplate those journeys that are yet to begin’’.
Cr Doyle said the Jim Stynes Bridge would remind people of the contribution the 2010 Melburnian of the Year had made to Melbourne.
‘‘Jim Stynes represented the quintessential Melbourne story: a migrant made good. The story of his settling in Melbourne, his outstanding AFL career, his philanthropy and charity work, and his brave fight against cancer touched us all,’’ the Lord Mayor said.
Mr Guy said he was delighted to open the new bridge, which was ‘‘a fitting tribute to this outstanding man … This bridge ensures that Jim’s work is alive in the hearts and minds of all Melburnians’’.
Designed by engineers Aurecon in partnership with Cox Architecture, a bronze plaque at each end of the bridge tells the life story of Stynes, who died in 2012.
