Amateur historian and bridge enthusiast Jim Vile thinks it’s the Cooreei Bridge in Dungog and hopes someone can shed some light on the structure’s identity. 

Mr Vile has spent decades researching and photographing 300 of Hunter’s ­original wooden bridges – a passion that started with a devastating flood in 1941 which wiped out five of the original structures around his Hillsborough property. 

“I find them very interesting, once they’re replaced, they’re gone forever,” Mr Vile, who was in high school at the time of the flood, said. 

The Mercury’s photographers believe the quality of the photograph means it was likely taken on a glass negative, which would place it sometime between the late 1800s and early 1900s. 

Mr Vile doesn’t know how or when he acquired the photograph that he rediscovered while cleaning out a pile of bridge images collected over his 84 years. 

His bridge photo album goes as far back as the 1800s with a photograph of his aunt riding horse and buggy across a Dungog bridge into town. 

“It’s quite difficult to get in a good position to photograph them [the bridges].  It’s taken a lot of time locating them; at one stage I even got in touch with an engineering business in Sydney.” 

Mr Vile has lived on his family’s property his entire life where he raised a family, worked and still works today. 

Research runs in the Vile blood and his sister, who lives on a nearby homestead, has published a book on the family history. Their great-grandfather, a cobbler, sailed from England to Newcastle with his wife and six children in 1830. 

“I suppose we’re all very interested in history, apart from the bridge photographs I collect Aboriginal artefacts and early hand tools.”