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 on standby. The weekend was a long agony of nothing happening.
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 watc
h. 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. I was 55, she was 22. I thought, what would she see in me? But she was there again the next day. She died at 32 of breast cancer.’
Out the front of Joe’s house a smaller sign read NO HIGH VIZ CLOTHING PAST THIS POINT. Why did he object to high-visibility clothing? Anger roused him, brought him out of his agony. He said, ‘A meter man came the other day dressed in high-vis. Who the hell did he think he was? A bloody meter man! It’s gone too far.’
Hurt, eccentric, intense Greymouth, pop. 9,000, with its rich, tingling scent of coal. A freight train gave a tender hoot as it trundled into town on Friday afternoon, pulling six carriages of timber from the sawmill at Stillwater. I made my way to Grey District Council to interview the mayor, Tony Kokshoorn.
A frisky sort of rooster, chatty and bright-eyed, Kokshoorn gave interview after interview during the crisis at Pike. He said, ‘This place is never far from a news bulletin. It’s normally a struggle type of story – a flood, a mining disaster. I’m writing a book at the moment. Here’s half of it.’ He handed over a fat lump of manuscript, The Golden Grey: Westland’s 150th Anniversary. ‘It’s going to be 400 pages!’ He flipped to sad pictures of the 1967 Strongman mining disaster and said, ‘It’s going to be up to date. It’ll have Pike in it.’
He had been at his weekend bach putting in a lounge suite when he heard ambulances whirr past. Then the phone rang: the police. ‘I said to the wife, “It’s blown its top.” She said, “What has?” I said, “The bloody mine – it’s blown its fucking top!”
‘I was one of the first to get up there. It was still light, about six or seven o’clock. The search and rescue guys were ready to go in. “Koko” – that’s what they call me – “Koko,” they said, “we’re ready.” I said, “Yeah, I hope you’re going in shortly.” But there was a terrible air of inevitability about it. We all knew in some way.’
He sat behind his desk wearing black dress pants and a purple shirt. There was a selection of ties on a yellow plastic coat hanger in the corner. He laced his fingers together and said, ‘Greymouth is a town that’s weighted down by this huge disaster.’
Then he leapt up from his chair. ‘All the media who came – it was like a city. It was incredible. For weeks! Just this huge attention.’ He hefted a giant scrapbook on to his desk. It was stuffed with press clippings about Pike. ‘Just look at this – goes on forever. There’s bloody more of them over on the shelf,’ he said, his eyes shining. He pointed at a stack of scrapbooks. ‘Eight of them, all chocka. I’m never far away from the news media, don’t you worry about that! I reckon I’d go unchallenged in New Zealand for press coverage. What d’ya reckon? Hey, look at this one.’
He had flipped to a story about an opinion poll that listed him as the tenth most trusted man in New Zealand. He laughed and said, ‘Bloody old Koko, eh. Not bad for a kid from Ruru. I’ll tell you what, I’d rather be a big fish in a small pond. I’ve no interest in looking beyond the Coast. I fight for the Coast.
‘I lobbied hard for Pike to open. We know it will open again. We’re on the cusp of a mineral boom, and that will be led by coal and then gold. China and India are screaming for what we’ve got. The Paparoas – they’re chocka with coke and coal. There’s six to ten billion dollars’ worth in there. This is Greymouth,’ said the mayor. ‘This is a coal town, and we’re proud of it.’
This is Notown. Fred Nyberg, 76, warmed the teapot on the coal range in his one-room hut. He cut open a tin of condensed milk. His hut in this ghost town in beech forest half an hour inland from Greymouth was off the power grid. He ran his seven-inch black and white Rhapsody TV from a twelve-volt car battery.
Serene, gentle, wise, Fred was living a West Coast pastoral. Outside his window there was one fantail, one hawk. Further along the road, there was a historic cemetery and the end of the road. ‘I get Māori hens wanting to come in here,’ he said. ‘wekas. I’ll see them once in a while, always on a morning of little dew.’
Fred’s immaculate hair was combed into a kind of quiff. He was elegant in a cardigan and brown nylon pants. Notown – so-called because a surveyor viewed the tents hurriedly pegged out during the 1860s’ gold rush and commented, ‘It looks like no town at all’ – thrived until the turn of the century, and was deserted by about 1920.
‘I had it to myself when I first came here,’ Fred said. He’d lived in Notown for 25 years. He bought the hut for a hundred dollars. The shower was next to the food cupboards; the bed, coal range, and a Formica table and two chairs were in the other room. He laid a cloth over the television. There was an umbrella in the outhouse.
He poured the tea and said, ‘I’m an avid reader; if the weather kicks up, I can read six bloody books in a week. I cook well. I eat good tucker. I make sure I eat my vegies every night, and always do me a good meat stew every Sunday. One day I’ll have to surrender to old age. But I love doing what I’m doing. I love panning.’
On the wall of the hut: a calendar from Morris and Watson Precious Metal Refiners. Outside the front door: gold. Had he made any money? ‘Let’s say I’m comfortable,’ he said. ‘Nothing can hurt me. But I’m not greedy. It’s a hobby, you could say. I just love the sheer joy of doing it.’
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.’
Civilisation Page 22
