The love locks battle is lost and it seems eternal love is no match for the bolt cutters.
For three years, lovers had placed their names on padlocks and then attached them to the wires on the footbridge between Southbank and Flinders Street Station.
But on Wednesday Melbourne City Council ordered workers to remove the padlocks with the locks weighing down safety barrier wires.
Initially, workers used bolt cutters to remove the more than 20,000 locks, but later they took the faster approach of temporarily disconnecting the wires and then sliding them into buckets – dozens at a time.
It was too much for lovers Garth Ploog and Emily Thompson. The engaged couple had locked their love lock on the bridge on an anniversary a couple of years ago. Mr Ploog thought it was a romantic way to “get a kiss” at the end of the night.
The couple, who now have an eight-month-old child, were walking nearby when they heard about the locks being removed.
“I thought I would ask if we could sneak our one back before they threw it in the Yarra,” Mr Ploog said.
He was happy to get a couple of years out of the romantic gesture. Ms Thompson can see it from the council’s perspective.
“I think it is sad that they are coming down but obviously it’s not built to have locks on here,” Ms Thompson said.
A Melbourne council spokeswoman Kate Millar said the wires were sagging under the weight and causing a safety issue with the barrier rather than any sort of structural problem.
She said the smaller locks were individually removed with bolt cutters but larger locks were able to slide off once the wires were un-hooked.
Ms Millar said workers would continue at the site for up to three days but once the locks were off they would be placed in storage.
She said there were no proposals yet for what to do with the 20,000 locks but some ideas had come forward. The bar beneath the bridge, Ponyfish Island, suggested the locks could be part of its major refurbishment. Other ideas include melting them down to form a public art installation.
“There are no proposals yet but we will be re-purposing them once they are all off,” Ms Millar said.
The council is considering renaming the pedestrian bridge the Evan Walker Bridge.
This story first appeared in The Age
