Nothing continued to happen on the Monday. ‘At the moment we are in rescue mode,’ Trevor Watts, general manager of New Zealand Mines Rescue, said in response to a suggestion the miners may have come to harm. The front-page story on that day’s Greymouth Evening Star read: ‘It could be teatime before the first rescue bid at the Pike River mine even gets under way, distraught families of the 29 missing men were told this morning. However, after three out of four air tests proved clear, there was hope the rescue effort could enter the mine around noon…’
When the plastic tape flops down and just hangs there, the image on the CCTV film stays exactly as it is for the next minute and 36 seconds. The light doesn’t change. There’s an orange sunspot on the inside wall of the mine entrance. The plastic tape doesn’t budge.
The weather that Friday was lovely, clear as a bell. Christmas was only five weeks away. Summer on the Coast, swimming, fishing, beer, family – the afternoon felt ripe with promise. It was a day that felt very good to be alive on the Coast, that strange and magnetic republic. Of all the republics within New Zealand, the Coast is the most devout, makes the strongest claims for independence. Half the time it doesn’t bother calling itself West – it’s never heard of West, there’s only one Coast. On one side of the Southern Alps, New Zealanders; on the other side, Coasters, a distinct race, isolated, constantly asserting they’re staunch, but actually deeply afraid and for good reason. The Coast – underground, at sea, in bush – has a long history as a death trap. There is more pain and trauma here than anywhere else in New Zealand. Nineteen dead at the Brunner mine in 1896, nine at Dobson in 1926, nineteen at Strongman in 1967 – the dates of mining disasters run deep.
The men at Pike ranged in age from seventeen to sixty-four. The youngest, Joseph Dunbar, was on his first day at the mine. His father told journalists he hadn’t seen his son in eight years, didn’t know he was living in Greymouth, didn’t know he’d become a miner. He said, ‘Why was my wee boy in there?’
Wayne Abelson said, ‘Those bastards running Pike should have been thrown in jail right from the very beginning. They flaunted the rules. Pike was never safe. They offered me a job. I told them there was no fucking way I’m working in a single-exit mine with that amount of methane in it.’
He was 53, very large, and worked as a coal miner at Spring Creek. On Sunday afternoon he was in his house in Greymouth overlooking the sea. The front deck had just been built. It didn’t have any furniture on it. Two large women sat on the bare boards and smoked in the chill wind in silence, and then came inside and folded towels in the living room in silence. The odour of the house was thick with dog. The TV was tuned to the crime investigation channel on Sky: Wayne had been watching World’s Toughest Cops. A large teenage boy walked into the kitchen, put his head in the fridge, and walked out. Wayne said he used to work as a fisherman. ‘There’s always a wave with your name on it. You’ve just got to dodge it. It’s no good doing a boring job.’ There was a large wild pig in a cage in the backyard. Wayne said, ‘Hello, Boris!’
In the low-income suburb of Blaketown, where no trees grew and the wind clawed at house paint, three adults and one child were in the possible presence of God inside a little old white stucco church. Pastors Alan and Claire Holley were with their young daughter, and a woman who waved her hands in the air. They belonged to The River, an Assembly of God sect. ‘We formed only four years ago,’ Alan said. ‘Greymouth is spiritually cautious but we believe people will come to trust us as we prove we’re stayers.’ A congregation of one had to be described as a low turnout. ‘I’d prefer it was bigger, yes.’ How much bigger? ‘I was expecting another three people today.’ He worked as an electrician at the Kotere meat works. Did he know anyone there called Rotten? ‘No,’ said Pastor Holley.
At the Grey River bar, the swell pitched a fishing boat up on an alarmingly high wave as it somehow made it out to sea in one piece. A crowd of five drove to the wharf to watch. Boats crossing the bar have long counted as one of Greymouth’s most exhilarating spectator sports.
A criminal defence lawyer was about to head back to the office and prepare for an upcoming rape trial; he talked about defending three generations of the same family, the grandfather, father and son, who were all unemployed.
Jerry Fulford, a tall man with a very full beard, said as waves assaulted the wharf, ‘Physically, the Coast is amazing. But people’s attitudes are depressing. All they can do is rape things. Coal. Gold. It’s an extractive mentality. I don’t call them coal mines; I say the people have coal minds.’ He worked as a stonemason and builder. ‘They call me the working hippie.’
The tide collapsed on to the black shore, sick and foaming. It was a day to stay indoors. Joe Gillman looked into the fire and said, ‘When someone dies, a piece of you dies.’ His house was known to everyone on the Coast. It had an eye-catching sign out the front that read WELCOME TO ALL THOSE WHO WISH ME WELL. EVERYONE ELSE CAN GO TO HELL.
Joe was in some sort of agony. There were framed photos of beautiful women on the wall of his house. Perhaps the most striking one wore her dark hair long and was on the back of a motorbike. ‘I met her at Jackson’s Bay wharf.
