You expect some suspense at a Grand Final of anything but the suspense at Monday's grand final of the Canberra Institute of Technology (CIT) Construction and Engineering Bridge Challenge had a special, pulse-quickening quality about it.
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"One hundred and nine [kilos]! One hundred and ten! One hundred and eleven!" children and teachers of the Namadgi School marvelled as the CIT's Douglas Lang tantalised by adding weights to the load dangling beneath one of the school's bridges.
According to the rules every bridge made by teams from the four finalists Canberra High School, Kingsford Smith School, Namadgi School and Caroline Chisholm School, had to be "tested to destruction".
And so at the Namadgi bridge's 112th kilo there was a sharp, dramatic "Kerrrack!" (imagine the loudest whipcrack you have ever heard) as the plucky little bridge at last surrendered. Everyone in the CIT's barn-like Renewable Energy Skills Centre of Excellence jumped. No one jumped further than Douglas Lang, who had to get out of the way of what was happening. Wood and weights went everywhere.
There was much cheering because at that stage this bridge made by one team of Namadgi's year 8 pupils had been the most enduring of all. All around lay the balsa smithereens of other teams' bridges that that had splintered in the mere 50s.
The Namadgi team handled the pieces of their wrecked (but somehow still triumphant) feat of engineering as if those pieces were sacred relics. Team leader Kieran Watkins-Molan rejoiced that they were thrilled because in the recent semi-finals their bridge had splintered at the 42 kilo mark. And so on Monday every thrilling kilo beyond the 43rd was a triumph, a testament to cluey improvements they had made.
Later, other bridges survived even greater stresses (one bridge soldiered on, groaning under its balsa breath, until the 176th kilo), although every bridge eventually gave in with the same astonishing crashings and splinterings.
The event's supremo Tony Cowlishaw, CIT's Coordinator – Building and Construction Management, explained that "the idea of the competition is to get students to engage with construction and engineering, and to make it fun".
"It's also to help them to develop a [higher education] pathway that might include a CIT instead of everyone always thinking just university, university, university."
Canberra High School's three teams between them won all four trophies, with the aforementioned Samson of a bridge, supporting 175 kilos, winning the award for balsa brute strength.
