Talk of the scenery at Pike reminded Cath to fetch something. She came back with a large rock. ‘Granite,’ she said. ‘One of the guys gave it to me. It’s from out of the mine.’ She said they went to Pike on Christmas Day. ‘It’s a beautiful place but it’s so far away. You just can’t go and visit. We want him home with us.’
The two-minute 31-second film opens with a faint movement: what looks like a strip of rag, fixed to the inside wall of the cave, stops blowing into the mine and flops down, inert. This is the beginning of the end, the moment the methane gas explodes about two and a half kilometres inside the mine.
‘Concussion … thermal injuries … acute hypoxia … The men would have died within three to five minutes of the explosion,’ the coroner said.
‘I was here working when it went off. I heard it,’ said Gina Howton, who ran the general store in nearby Blackball. ‘It was like that first clap of thunder in a storm. I thought, no one will come out of that alive.’ Some of the men were customers. ‘A couple of guys who worked there said, “It’s gonna blow. Not if, but when.” That’s what they said.’
The next week transformed quiet Blackball into a madhouse. ‘Hours and hours of helicopters going back and forth, people coming in all the time and breaking down. Everyone popped in: families, police, the media, the rescue guys. I hate to say it but tragedy is good for business. It’s true. It was like that with the paedophile too.’
The paedophile of Blackball, made to leave town and never come back, as recorded in chapter 14. Gina and her husband Paul had lived in Blackball for two years when that went down; they had moved down from Auckland. ‘Paul always says when we go back, “It’s good coming back to New Zealand.”’ Did she miss Auckland? ‘Probably Briscoes is the only thing.’
At the pub, drinkers lined the bar, played pool, wore black jeans. There used to be a friendly little guy who called himself Rotten and boarded upstairs. Word was that he had shifted to Greymouth to board upstairs at the Royal. It was true. He was in his room that Saturday night. It had a single bed and a hand basin. It cost $140 a week. Rotten said, ‘I want to move on and up. Get a girlfriend. But I’m a hobo. That’s the truth of it.’
Downstairs at the bar, a hot fire blazed in a very old fireplace. ‘Look at the brickwork,’ he said. ‘These are primo fuckin’ bricks, mate.’ Rotten was hairy, wore black jeans, said the last job he had was knocking down and replacing a boiler at the Kotere meat works.
The drink made him sentimental. ‘My mother touched my face, and said, “Get it together.” I had a mohawk then. I said, “But I have got it together. I’ve got a girlfriend.” My mother died the next day. I went to the house and my stepbrother said, “She’s passed away.” I said, “Where to?” It took me three days before it clicked. I just could not believe it. I was doing an engineering course in Stillwater. The students formed a guard of honour for me with screwdrivers and spanners, any tool you can name.’
The publican approached Rotten and had a word in his ear. ‘I do odd jobs around the place,’ Rotten said, and returned a few minutes later with a bucket of coal. He threw a shovel into the inferno. It sparked and made a noise like a wave crashing on shingle. Rotten touched the brickwork with his fingers. They felt like art. He said, ‘Primo fuckin’ bricks.’
It was so cold outside it boxed your ears and ripped tears from your eyes. The night was loud with the smashing Tasman Sea. Inside, there were good times for families at the packed Bonzai Pizza Parlour, good times for happy drunks at the sing-song Revingtons Hotel, good times for cool people upstairs at the funky Franks Café. In the morning the famous wind known as The Barber cut through town on the back of the Grey River, heading seaward, its freezing cold and piercing blade attended by a tail of white mist.
The best place in town for a good breakfast was ABC Quick Lunch. The day warmed up, softened the air, and allowed Greymouth’s familiar woozy scent to rise up: the scent of coal.
In the CCTV footage outside the coal mine, the rag fixed to the wall is actually a piece of plastic tape attached to a rib bolt. It was referred to as such by associate professor David Cliff of Queensland University’s minerals industry safety and health centre. Cliff’s name was regularly in the media in the days immediately following the Pike explosion. He explained what was happening inside the mine. He said that temperatures may have soared higher than 1,200 degrees centigrade when the fireball exploded.
He also explained the significance of the plastic tape. It usually inclines towards the mine, following the flow of air, he said. But it flops down at the very beginning of the two-minute-31-second film because a shock wave has been set off: the mine has exploded.
‘The guys in the tunnel would have felt the shock wave and all the entrained dust etc, but the air would still have been breathable. … That may be some glimmer of hope.’
Pike production manager Steve Ellis also held out hope. He told the royal commission he believed some of the men had survived the first blast, that they could have taken refuge near a compressed airline, or been sheltered by mining equipment. Rescue teams were put on standby. They remained
