The 160-year-old remains of a timber bridge built by women convicts before the 1860s is most likely the first of many to be found by construction crews working on the Kingsford Smith Drive widening.

It now looks now as if the hidden treasure of old bridge structures could be kept as a chronicle of Brisbane’s earliest days if agreement can be reached on how to move and protect the old timber bridge.

Kingsford Smith Drive project director David Balmer with Brisbane City Council's infrastructure committee chair Cr Amanda Cooper. Credit:Tony Moore

Old hand-hewn hardwood beams making up a bridge over a small creek were discovered by the construction crews working on the $650 million widening of Kingsford Smith Drive.

The female convicts were asked in the early 1830s to build a road from the centre of Brisbane, when it was the original Moreton Bay Penal Colony, out to Brisbane’s first women’s prison at Eagle Farm.