Mary, Catherine and Elizabeth (plus a statue of St Barbara) were the stars of a ceremony to launch South Australia’s biggest ever infrastructure project in southern Adelaide on Monday. Source: The Southern Cross.
Premier Peter Malinauskas and Adelaide Archbishop Patrick O’Regan were at the South Road HQ of the Tunnels to Darington project on Monday to officially welcome the first of three tunnel boring machines (TBMs) that will take Adelaide’s motorway transport far into the 21st century.
The TBMs will plough through eight to 10 metres of earth per day beneath a 10.5km stretch of land that will form the improved, and non-stop, motorway corridor just to the west of the Adelaide CBD.
“South Australia is a special place to live,” the Premier said, adding that improved roads would “make it a better place to live”.
He unveiled the names of the three machines which refer to the state’s famous, late 19th century female suffragettes Mary Lee, Catherine Helen Spence and Elizabeth Webb Nicholls.
South Australia’s Constitution Amendment (Adult Suffrage) Act, in 1894, granted women the right to vote and the right to stand for Parliament. It was the state to give women the political vote anywhere in the world.
Archbishop O’Regan then blessed the first TBM with holy water, as well as a small, porcelain statue of St Barbara placed at the entrance to one of the tunnels.
St Barbara is the patron saint and protector of tunnellers and miners and such a ceremony has long been integral to commencing underground work across the world.
The tunnels, and their accompanying 21 bridges, are very much about “building bridges and not walls” with the local community (and further afield) Archbishop O’Regan said.
FULL STORY
Building bridges from north to south and back (The Southern Cross)
