I Was Actually There on ABC and ABC iview S1E6 – It took six days to discover Russell and Webb hadn’t been killed in the rockfall.
As the town celebrated Todd and Brant’s miraculous survival, rescue teams were frantically figuring out how to get the men to the surface.
“Now they were alive – shit, what do we do now? There’s two hundred tonnes of rock sitting above them. To try and get them out, if it went bad, we kill them,” recalls Beaconsfield Mine General Manager, Matthew Gill.
A range of new perspectives are unearthed, from those working to free the miners, locals and loved
ones keeping vigil outside, and others tasked with covering the biggest news story in the world at the time.
“We got the feeling the town didn’t want us there,” then rookie news reporter Candice Wyatt recalls, “but we had to make a story”.
Freed after an unimaginable 321 hours, celebrations for the mens’ survival were tempered by commiserations for their deceased co-worker Larry Knight. And nearly two decades later, the trauma of their ordeal lives on inside both men. “I’ve been down some very dark roads and the latest one eight or nine months ago, where I didn’t wanna be here,” admits Todd Russell.
Production credit:
A Docker Media Production for ABC. Created by Kirk Docker, Jon Casimir, Aaron Smith. Director, Kirk Docker. Co-Series Producers, Loni Smith and Josh Schmidt. Line Producer, Megan Nass. ABC Commissioning Editor, Julie Hanna. ABC Head of Factual, Susie Jones.
I Was Actually There on ABC and ABC iview – Tuesday 13 August at 8:00pm
TV Central ABC content HERE
Listen to TV Central podcast with creator Kirk Docker HERE
I Was Actually There on ABC and ABC iview S1E6
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