Finally, after fourteen days, Todd Russell and Brant Webb are free from the mine in which they’ve trapped. It’s a great achievement for the rescuers, and an amazing story of unlikely survival. Watching the TV coverage, it looked like they were both careful enough to clock off on leaving the mine – think of the overtime!
Meanwhile, the funeral of Larry Knight, killed in the cave-in, will be held today. Our thoughts will be with his family and friends.
John Quiggin 
Never mind the overtime. Think of the cheque from A Current Affair.
They deserve every cent.
As the men who rescued them should be well rewarded too.
Well done with the rescue!
I hope you can give a quick sketch of the relative state of Australian mine safety one of these days. It would be interesting to compare the safety record to US mines.
Re the clocking off, it’s a safety thing. There’s a board that notes who’s gone underground and not yet come back up.
In the circumstances, it would have been very satisfying for the guys to log themselves as having returned to the surface.
Brilliant work all round.
What a huge episode of reality TV. A triumph of hope and teamwork.
I am glad they are safe and out.
“Our thoughts will be with his family and friends.”
Speaking out of turn here, but I think that the spectacle of national mourning has gone far enough. Most Australians do not know the deceased ever, therefore our thoughts aren’t and shouldn’t be with their family and friends. I think that they may find it quite creepy to have strangers proclaiming a sense of loss and mourning along side them. This holds generally, not only for this particular death.
I don’t have a long observation time frame, but I have noticed a steep rise in the national hobby of national mourning. John Howard’s key note address at the 10 year anniversary of the Port Arthur massacre was a local maximum. He should attend if he is invited, but giving a speech in his capacity as Prime Minister is innapporiate. Australia and Australians generally do not own the Port Arthur tragedy and should not treat it as a national event.
Some things are deserving of national mourning or significance, perhaps the depression, Aboriginal massacres, Gallipoli and it would be entirely appropriate for political representatives to take an active role in these things.
One last example is the attendence of Brendan Nelson at private Kovco’s funeral. That was totally political and totally sickening, bureaucrats from the army should be in attendence at a military funeral, but never political leaders.
Benno,
Perhaps if G.W. Bush had to attend every funeral of a US serviceperson there would be less scope for poor decisions on the economy.
On topic, having worked on a mine, Tony Healy is correct – it would have been enormously satisfying to clock off in that way. I imagine the feel would have been hard to describe.
CNN covered the story around the clock for the last week. I can’t remember the last time Australia won sustained global attention of that kind.
Benno,
Nationhood is in many ways just a collection of symbolic or iconic events. If I said Lindy Chamberlain most Australians would know what event I was refering to, most non-Australians would not. When we watch the trials and tribulations of strangers on TV it is pretty human to feel some connection and some mood swings.
Goodwill towards strangers is not something we should regard as weird, but rather something that we should see as desirable. Of course there should be a certain degree of detachment lest we all cease to function every time some stranger dies. However I don’t think you should rationalise the humanity out of the moment.
Regards,
Terje.
Maybe I’m going all post modern, but I think there is something weird about a drama which catches the nation’s attention, when dreadful things happen to people every day and we don’t really care.
Private Kovco is the obvious example. Soldiers often get killed in accidents, and get buried like anyone else. There is no suggestion that his death depended on being in Iraq, except that his gun was loaded. And yet, we have this huge event to deal with his death.
Obviously the politicians moved to deal with a focus group problem, but how did it get created in the first place? We reacted to the arm-chair game of “what really happened” because the original story was implausible, and we were caught up in the strange horror of his body.
I think there is something new about the intensity of this, created by the technology that allows for media flooding of an event, but also a certain hunger we have developed for emotive public judgement.
Maybe the Chamberlain example proves me wrong, but I think that one took a long time to develop, and had more intensity at the climax as a result.
The thing is, suffering isn’t enough – we need a narrative shape to suck us in. Mine disasters always have the structure of a good story. Works on me, too, of course, and I too am moved that we care.
Jesus died 2000 years ago and people still dwell on the narrative. I think it has something to do with how human brains function. Stories have a special meaning for us.
Benno says: I have noticed a steep rise in the national hobby of national mourning.
Seeker says: Me too, and it is disturbing in some profound ways, and just a little too much of a convenient stage for political leaders to parade on.
Seeker, which politicians have paraded on the the Beaconsfield stage?
Terje,
As one who feels a great deal of satisfaction for the results, shares the joy of the wives and families of the rescued men and feels keenly the loss for the families of the dead miner, I can’t resist giving Shorten the following spray.
The answer to your question concerning politicians Terje is “Bill Shorten for one”. I know he is yet to take his seat in Parliament, but you know the saying, you should start as you mean to go on. What a plonker he is. His posturing merely signalled to anyone who knows anything about these matters, that the union has no effective organisation on the ground at the site. If there was effective organisation, the commentary and union support function would have been provided by the local leadership, with behind the scenes backup from the National Office. That union has a lot of unorganised workers to organise, particualrly in metalliferous mining, and perhaps if Bill Shorten was a bit more focussed on his day job, and a little less focussed on his career move, the union organisation in metalliferous mining might be a tad better than the overall disaster it is.
His performance has not gone unnoticed in many quarters, and his members have a right to ask what exactly he was doing there all that time that local deleagtes could not do. And if he can spend that amount of time away from his real job, which is to lead a national union, perhaps the job doesn’t need filling, or perhaps it is just as well he is moving on, to a place where the rest of us pick up his tab, and not just the poor memebrs of the AWU.
Benno and Seeker
Might the observed steep rise in national mourning be a function of the (thank heavens!)relative scarcity of such tragedies.The death or wounding of an individual serviceman/woman in WW1 or WW2 would unlikely to have been a event of any significance outside his/her family and local community. Were Australias mines as dangerous China’s the loss of a single or a small group of miners in an accident would rate little more than a passing mention in the national media. Perhaps living in a society in which politicians attend (for unalturistic purposes )the ocassional funeral for a lost soldier or miner is far preferable to living in one where such tragedies are daily events.