SEVENTY years after Jan Middleton plunged more than 10 metres from the old Fremantle Traffic Bridge in a car, she wants to be one of the first people to cross its replacement.

Ms Middleton was 22 and working at General Motors Holden in Mosman Park when she took two female colleagues for a drive during their lunch break in 1956, letting one take the wheel for a driving lesson.

As they approached the old bridge, the car hit an oil slick.

“It was the funniest feeling… all of a sudden it did two complete circles in the middle of the road,” Ms Middleton said.

“Once we went into it, I was calling out to Barbara, ‘Brake, Barb, brake!’ but she couldn’t even find the brake. We were in such a skid.”

The car struck one of the bridge’s concrete pillars, and like a scene from a movie, was pushed to the edge where it teetered perilously for a moment.

“I remember leaning forward to try to balance it, but it didn’t work.”

• Jan Middleton’s hoping for a less dramatic crossing of the Fremantle’s Traffic Bridge this time around, as she was left upside-down 70 years ago (below). Photo by Steve Grant

The car went over the side, and while you might expect some all-consuming terror, Ms Middleton described the moment as more being “disappointed that I was going to die”.

The car landed upside down, but remarkably all three women survived with barely a scratch.

Ms Middleton said she was completely winded and ended up halfway out the window when the car landed.

“One of the other girls was in the back seat eating her lunch. There were no seatbelts. All the seats had been torn out of their mountings.”

The car was a Ford Prefect, which Jan credits with helping save their lives, noting with some irony her job at a Holden factory.

“It was built like a tank, and that’s why we’re here today, I’m sure.

“All the Holden men told us that if we’d been in a Holden, we would have been dead.”

The three women escaped with no serious injuries, although they were bruised badly enough to take cushions to work after their one day off.

Ms Middleton’s passenger Barbara Shimon was the paymaster at GMH, meaning her absence had an immediate impact.

“It was the first time in history the poor old men at GMH didn’t get paid because Barbara wasn’t there to pay them.”

People rushed to the scene from nearby factories and businesses.

The car itself was repaired rather than written off.

“It was £20 off being a write-off in those days, and they wouldn’t write it off. So we had to get it repaired.

“It was never the same.”

Ms Middleton’s daughter Bron said her mother may have carried an injury from the crash for decades.

“Mum had major surgery on her neck when she was 80, and they reckoned it was the whiplash from the accident.”

Ms Middleton has lived for about four decades where she can see the bridge from her home on Preston Point Road.

“I’ve often taken myself down there. One Sunday afternoon I clambered down and looked up, and I thought, ‘Wow, someone was smiling on me that day’.”

Now the old bridge has gone and the Cook government has announced a November 1 opening for the its replacement – months ahead of schedule.

Ms Middleton no longer drives, but she wants to be one of the first to make the new crossing on foot, using her walking frame.

“I can’t explain it. It’s just a connection,” she said. Today, Ms Middleton is the only one of the three women still alive to tell the story.

And she wants her next crossing of the Fremantle Traffic Bridge to be considerably less dramatic.

The Chook reached out to the state government to see if there was a chance for Ms Middleton to realise her dream.

by STEVE GRANT