Tomorrow, on the 8^th stage of my walk along the Derwent River, I expect to reach and walk through a second suburb. The suburb of Bridgewater is located within the Brighton Council municipality on the eastern shore of the Derwent River, adjacent to Herdsmans Cove the suburb of which is located slightly to the south. The original settlement was known as Green Point.

Bridgewater has four primary schools, one high school and a Trade Training Centre all linked into the Jordon River Learning Federation.  According to http://www.aussietowns.com.au/town/bridgewater-tas, “in the 1970s the area saw a public housing broad-acre estate which gave it a reputation. By 1997, Bridgewater was considered to have Australia’s lowest level of wellbeing. Whole streets of public housing stood vacant, houses smashed and torched. Housing Tasmania administrators remember people writing on their applications that they wouldn’t live in Bridgewater or Gagebrook – no matter how desperate they were.By 2003 Bridgewater was experiencing a housing boom and property prices, particularly for houses and land overlooking the Derwent River, tripled and quadrupled.”

I suspect Bridgewater has ‘grown up’ since those days and I look forward to seeing what it now offers.

A current profile of the suburb indicates the following: the median house price is $159,000; its population is 4024; its median household weekly income is $680; the median age of its residents is 32; the median housing loan repayment is $1036 monthly; 52% are not married and 14% are in a defacto relationship; 17% are under 14 years of age.  I wonder what this will all mean practically on the ground as I walk the paths along the Derwent River. Probably nothing at all.