Avis bridge celebrates a centenary
“This bridge is 100 years old this year,” Connie Meissner wrote recently, captioning a photograph that he had found on the internet and was now re-entering the system.This statement refers to the railway bridge over the Klein Windhoek River, which flows into the Avis dam.
On a photographic collection that the AZ sold on CD a few years ago, the AZ found the photo with the caption: “Avis dam with railway bridge, 1934”. This coincides with the year when Namibia recorded record amounts of rain, as can be seen in the photo.
The bridge is a steel structure over the river and the B6 main road leading to Gobabis. At the time, the construction material was purchased from Cape Town.
Today the dam doesn’t record these kinds of water level after a sluice was installed in 2001, which was first tested in February 2002.
In order to protect the dam wall, which was already quite run down at the time, the sluice was equipped with an automatic float so that the water is drained off automatically. The so-called storage target (Full Supply Level, or FSL) no longer met the safety criteria, which is why the outflow was increased.