He talked about the creeks, about using a pump and an old cradle. There was a light in his eyes. The light was golden. Fred warmed both hands around his teacup and said, ‘When you’re out there panning you don’t feel like you have blood running in your veins. You feel like you have something beautiful running through you. It’s a feeling of peace. It’s a great feeling. A great feeling.’
The one minute and 36 seconds when nothing apparently happens on the CCTV film – when the light doesn’t change, when nothing moves, including the all-important piece of plastic tape – ought to be boring. It isn’t: it’s terrifying. David Cliff described what was going on inside the mine: ‘The explosion pressure wave would have reflected like a billiard ball off the walls and could have passed multiple times in differing directions throughout the mine – much like making a break at snooker where the balls hit the cushions multiple times.’
Two men survived. Daniel Rockhouse was knocked off his feet, lost consciousness, and regained it about 20 minutes later. ‘I was just freaking out,’ he told the royal commission. ‘I then closed my eyes and thought that was it. I thought I was dead and was screaming, “Please don’t do this.” I don’t know if I was talking to God or something. I was just freaking out. I was screaming, “Is there anyone out there? Help. Help. Help.” But no one answered me.’ He got to his feet, found a workmate, Russell Smith, unconscious and dragged him on a long walk through the mine to safety.
The royal commission was held in four stages and met at the district court. The premises were formerly a supermarket. In the aisles of justice on a Friday morning, thirteen family members of the 29 men sat in four rows of reserved seats and maintained their vigil as a man from the Department of Conservation gave evidence. He talked about dealing with the Pike mining company before the explosion. When he asked to see their emergency response plan, he had to advise the company that a number of names and phone numbers were out of date.
Bernie Monk was in court. As spokesman for the Pike families, he made it his business to attend every day. He took it all in. There were allegations about the mining company’s slack attitude towards safety issues. There were criticisms of the police. There were allegations of hopeless mismanagement at the rescue scene. The mine manager considered using a fishing rod to lower a gas monitoring device down the ventilation shaft; St John Ambulance Service suggested lowering a stomach pump to suck up air samples; Mines Rescue lowered a radio and a lamp in a bucket.
Control room operator Daniel Duggan, who lost his brother Chris in the disaster, tried to contact the men immediately after the explosion. His voice over the intercom echoed in the mine: ‘Anyone underground? Anyone?’
A seismic listening device was attached to the tunnel entrance. It would relay any tapping by miners to indicate they were alive.
A defence force robot was sent down the mine. It was battery-powered, operated with four cameras and carried a thousand metres of fibre optic cable; when it arrived at Pike, it was accompanied by a team from the Explosive Ordnance Disposal Squadron. It got a little way into the mine, got wet and conked out. Tony Kokshoorn said, ‘Why the hell didn’t it have a bit of Glad Wrap over it?’
Inside the mine there was Stuart Mudge, 31, described by his dad Stephen Rose as ‘fit, very strong and very healthy’. Rose told reporters, ‘When the explosion happened Stuart was probably driving a very valuable piece of machinery. Working with that machinery and those guys is the pinnacle of his working career.’
There was Francis Marden of Barrytown, described by his wife Lauryn as a family man, an artist, a potter – ‘I am wearing a piece of jewellery he handcrafted. He was a great gardener who had an affinity with the birds, communicating with them, I think, because of his gentle nature.’ She told the Greymouth Star, ‘He hated every day of it [mining] … only did it to pay the bills. He could ride a horse, shoot a gun, he has built us two houses from the ground up. …
‘Francis was anything but a miner. Some stories have said he loved going to the pub with his mates. He never went to the pub. He was too tired when he got home to go anywhere. He’s never set foot in the pub.’
There was Terry Kitchin. His partner Tara Kennedy told the royal commission she held out hope he’d survived the first blast. ‘I was going home every day and telling my three kids that Daddy would be home in time for their birthdays,’ she said. They’d made Welcome Home cards for him.
There was Zen Drew. His father Laurie Drew sat in the royal commission with a tattoo of an enormous spider – possibly a tarantula, but it didn’t seem the right time to ask – covering the top of his skull.
There was Michael Monk. The day of his memorial service was also his birthday. ‘Michael,’ sighed Bernie Monk. ‘Well, Michael at 23 was very motivated. He had a lovely girlfriend, Gemma, and you could tell the way things were going to go with those two. He’d bought a section for $165,000 overlooking the sea for the two of them to build on. But anyway in a split second it’s all over.’
He sighed again. ‘He was very quiet as a boy. He hardly said boo. Then he spent a year overseas and travelled around Europe when he was seventeen, eighteen, and that’s when he came out of his shell. That’s right, isn’t it?’
Cath Monk said, ‘No, he came out of his shell before that, when he was made a prefect at St Bede’s.’
Bernie was thinking about something else. ‘Let’s get the men out. It’s all I think about. The
