End of the longest shift

Miner Todd Russell emerged into the dawn to greet family members. Picture / Reuters

BEACONSFIELD - Rain closed in over Beaconsfield again yesterday, bringing an early dusk that emptied the streets of this small Tasmanian community.

It had rained also in Launceston, 40km away, where it fell in sheets across St John's Anglican Church and the Harley-Davidson and Triumph motorcycles lined against the footpath waiting to escort Larry Knight to Carr Villa cemetery.

Caught in the height of yesterday's rescue of miners Brant Webb and Todd Russell from two weeks' entombment 1km below ground, and in the depths of sorrow at the funeral of Mr Knight, killed in the Anzac Day disaster, Beaconsfield is a town having to learn to live with a new intensity of emotion.

"All the people who have worked on this operation deserve full praise," mine manager Matthew Gill said in the dawn that brought with it the joy of the pair's rescue from a rock prison so hard it turned aside the most potent of mining machinery.

"They have all been fantastic, working extraordinary hours in incredibly difficult conditions. They have done this while riding an emotional rollercoaster ... Bear in mind it is tempered with the fact that we will be having a funeral for Larry this afternoon."

But even with the pain, it was a day for rejoicing. Almost everyone in Beaconsfield, alerted by the special voodoo of small, tight communities, descended on the mine site well before the rescue was announced.

Even before my 4am alarm sounded in my car outside the mine, a colleague was on the phone.

Nearby, a friend had woken brewery worker Andrew Mitchell at 3.45am with the news that rescue was close. Mr Mitchell plays football with Mr Russell. Their children go to school together. He and wife Marianne, wrapped up Alex, 9, and Kelsie, 7, bundled them into the car and headed for the mine.

"I'll be late for work," he said, "but I'll make sure there's plenty for everyone to drink."

Rosie Garcia had been up all night at nearby Pleasant Pt, where the Russells live. She heard cars break the silence of early morning, guessed the family were heading for town and followed. Shaking rain from her hair, she said: "I'm just utterly amazed that anyone can survive that long."

Leanne Hobson, who with her husband Jeff raced to the mine after a tip-off from a friend in the local volunteer fire brigade, had initially despaired.

"I grew up with Todd. It was terrifying at first, but then I thought, 'He's a tough old bugger, he'll get out".

Laughing and embracing


Around them, hundreds of people were laughing and embracing. Children swaddled in quilted jackets and beanies raced among them. Janna Williams, 21, ran past in a purple dressing gown.

And the rain, pounding relentlessly for most of the night, stopped.

At 4.54am the mine owners texted journalists with the news that the two men were safe. Bill Shorten, the eloquent Australian Workers Union national secretary who became the public face of the rescue, was for once stumped for words.

Then, swallowing: "At 4.47 Brant Webb and Todd Russell were freed. The families are with them.

"It's an amazing day. The rescuers have done a fantastic job, the families are fantastic, and clearly these two men have been outstanding Australians. It's a great day - let's have some cheers." And the crowd, even the journalists, did, loud and long.

For 13 days and nights, the ground had steadfastly refused to give up the men, trapped in a steel cage less than 2m square. For five days, and especially after the body of Mr Knight was found in the machine all three had been riding, Beaconsfield feared it had lost three of its best-known members.

Even after the discovery that two had survived, the resilience of the rock that bound them, the back-breaking work of chiselling, drilling and blasting it apart, and the agony of expectations deferred time and again, strung nerves to a tight pitch.

Even when the last, crucial metres were ready to be attacked on Monday night, previous disappointments kept optimism at bay.

Rescuers believed they would have to shave their way up through more than 1m of diamond-hard quartzite and rubble, possibly needing to probe and probe again until they found the tiny 1m-square cavity that opened on the gate of the miners' cage, and work for hours in an intricate zig-zag to clear a passage to safety.

But for once, Mr Gill said, they had something working for them. Rescuers were much closer than they had thought, and late on Monday night the first probe broke through.

It had been a long, long road. When the rock refused to yield, rescuers called in explosives expert Darren Flanagan to devise a pattern of bores for a low-impact explosive called PCF to honeycomb the face and break it apart.

As the explosives detonated, Mr Russell, 34, and Mr Webb, 37, checked anxiously for any signs of vibration that could bring down tonnes of rock on them.

Hour after hour the process continued. "I would say, 'Okay boys', and we'd talk through it, and once they were comfortable, then we would count together, 'Three, two, one, fire'," Mr Flanagan said.

Extended drill


Directly below the trapped pair, in a tunnel just 1m square, miners on Monday night began to probe with a repeatedly extended drill.

At 9.24pm the rescuers announced to a stunned world that the bore had broken into the cavity.

"There were some good looks," said rescue co-ordinator Rex Johnson. "We had a camera in there so the boys were playing around pretty well. They'd had their bags packed for quite a while. The guys really wanted to get back to their families."

Few had expected such progress. Using a remote camera from below and guided from above by the trapped pair, a second bore was punched through to orientate the tunnelling.

"There was certainly a lot of excitement at their end," Mr Gill said. "At our end we needed to make sure we were settled, clear-thinking, worked out what we had, and took it carefully and safely, even though there was a big urge to hurry."

Mr Johnson shared the feeling. "You know they're so close and you really want to rush in, but everyone knew they had to stop and do it properly."

Using drills and picks, rescuers chipped upwards. This time the earth had been kind. Instead of an expected 1m or more, miners broke through only 40cm of rock and much less rubble. They called from below: "I can see your light." From the cavity, the reply: "I can see your light too."

A spell as miners squared the escape tunnel and made sure it was safe. Then the first man to see Mr Webb and Mr Russell in two agonising weeks, identified by the Age in Melbourne as workmate Glenn Burns, popped his head into the cavity. No one will say what the first words were.

"Everyone was elated," Mr Johnson said. "To get their mates out after such a long period of time has been unreal. Everyone at the mine should be really proud, because everyone pulled together. It wasn't just the mine - the community, everyone, pulled together in a time of need, so it's been great."

Without haste, Mr Russell and Mr Webb took the grab-bags with their iPods and messages and slipped down the tunnel, lay on evacuation stretchers and were pulled to freedom.

"Yeah," said Mr Johnson with a grin, "they had it pretty easy."

Paramedics and doctors made rapid checks. Amazed at their condition, they allowed the Nissan 4WDs carrying the pair to bypass the immense 700m deep cavern called the crib on the 5km spiral up to the surface, where they had been expected to undergo extensive checks, and sent them direct to the bottom of Hart shaft at 375m.

'Welcome'


There Mr Gill was waiting. "Welcome," he said. The three hugged.

Later, on the surface, Mr Gill was asked how he felt about the salvation of two men he considers friends.

"My knees are shaking and I haven't quite worked out where I am at this minute."

Below, Mr Webb and Mr Russell showered, walked into the lift and were taken up to meet their families. They embraced.

Then the pair did what they had pledged to do but what most medical advisers had believed would be impossible: unsteadily, perhaps, but with undisguised joy and dressed in miners' helmets and yellow reflective jackets, they moved their tags from the red (below) board to green- finally clocking off - and walked out to more embraces.

Outside, the town, and the world, waited in a palpable electricity of excitement. At 6.10am a policeman walked up to the orange net fencing framing the route to Launceston General Hospital and said: "A couple of minutes, folks."

Three minutes later the mine gates opened, a police car moved forward at a walking pace, and the two ambulances carrying Mr Russell and Mr Webb stopped. The rear doors opened, and for a moment everyone thought the men intended to walk out. "Oh my God," shouts a woman.

But the procession continued, ambulances moving with interior lights on and, even at this stage, the banter that had become the pair's trademark. "You can't kill me, son," Mr Russell called to a mate.

In the pre-dawn, fire alarms were screaming, the bell of the Uniting Church pealed for the first time since the end of World War II, cars' horns bellowed and the crowd cheered, wept, embraced and jumped for joy.

A tearful local turned to a reporter and, amazed, said, "Journalists don't cry?"

"Sometimes," she replied. My Adam's apple vibrated unprofessionally.

As they passed, Mr Webb and Mr Russell grinned and waved from their ambulance stretchers. Their families followed in two vans, faces streaming with tears of joy.

Kay Russell, Todd's mother, leaned out the rear window with a smile that bisected her face.

As they passed the honour guard of miners in full working kit and turned right towards Launceston, the party began. The fire brigade did endless laps of the main street, lights flashing and sirens screaming. Alarms roared. Horns replied. And people celebrated.

At the Club Hotel, publican Chris Rundle was doing a brisk trade with the flow of free beer. By 7.30am, he reported, the pub was down a barrel and a half and was still going strong.

By midday the mood had sobered. Larry Knight, husband of Jaqui, father of Lauren, 19, Addison, 10, and tiny Thomas, 9 months, was to be buried. Unprotected by the steel cage and the miraculous slab of rock that saved his colleagues, Mr Knight had been crushed by the cave-in. His family delayed the funeral for as long as possible to protect morale as rescuers tunnelled towards the trapped pair, hoping they would be freed in time to farewell their mate. Unable, finally, to bear the pain any longer, they decided to bury Larry.

Hundreds of mourners poured into St John's Church as the heavens opened, among them Mr Webb and Mr Russell - walking unsteadily and surrounded by friends and family - the bereaved of Beaconsfield, and more than 60 members of the motorcycle community of which Knight was a respected member.

God's Squad Christian bikers mixed with Satan's Riders and the Devil's Henchmen.

All joined in the Miner's Prayer:

When the whistle blows each morning
And I go down in that cold dark mine
I say a prayer to my dear Saviour
Please let me see the sunshine one more time. Amen.