A Life-Changing Rescue
Karen Pendrey was on her day off when she was called to take part in one of Australia’s most famous rescues 20 years ago, the Beaconsfield mine disaster. Then 38, Karen, from Launceston, was the first paramedic to speak to miners Todd Russell and Brant Webb, who were trapped nearly a kilometre underground at Tasmania’s Beaconsfield mine.
“They seemed to be in pretty good spirits,” she tells Woman’s Day. “They’d just been found, and they thought they would get out pretty quickly.” But they were wrong. As the nation held its breath, the miners would endure nine more agonising days underground, as a rescue team worked their way to them.
They became trapped in the open metal cage of a telehandler – like an underground cherry picker – when more than 800 tonnes of rock collapsed on the machine at the Beaconsfield Gold Mine on the Anzac Day evening of April 25, 2006.
Deep Underground
The disaster killed miner and father-of-three Larry Knight, 44, who was operating the telehandler. Of the 16 other miners on shift that night, 14 escaped unscathed, but two remained missing – Todd Russell, 34, an Aussie Rules-loving married father of three, and Brant Webb, 37, a married dad of twins and a larrikin at heart.
At the time, Karen was an intensive care paramedic for Ambulance Tasmania at a base near Launceston, and mum to two boys aged nine and 13. “When I got there, [the rescuers] said, ‘We’ve located them, we need you to go down and assess them,’” she says. “I thought I was just going to be at the top.”
Instead, after a safety briefing, she was taken deep under the earth to the heart of the mine. “I got into this little lift, and went down all these levels,” she recalls. “It was very small and it gets cold, and there’s rock on all sides of you. I suddenly felt extremely claustrophobic and anxious. I was like, ‘What on earth am I doing? I’ve got two boys at home.’”
The lift doors eventually opened to an underground road. Karen was taken by ute on the road, which corkscrewed further down, until she was 925 metres under. “It was like another world,” she recalls.
At the site of the collapse, rescuers had managed to get a pipe through the rock to Todd and Brant to communicate with them. “My first words to them were, ‘I’m Karen, I’m the paramedic,’” she says. “And Todd actually played football with my brother, so we had a bit of rapport straight away. I asked them if they were hurt, and how they were feeling. They seemed OK, but I think they thought they would be out soon.”
As rescuers drilled into the fallen rock and detonated low-impact explosives in their heart-stopping operation to reach the pair, Karen spent 12 hours each day talking with the miners, who were trapped in a cage the size of a kitchen table. When her shift was over, her team was replaced with another paramedic unit that included her paramedic husband, Daryl Pendrey.
Finally Free
The conversations with the miners took place on phones that were delivered through the pipe. “We talked a lot of rubbish,” Karen recalls with a smile. “For a long time we talked about how to make cocktails. And then we would jokingly bag out the paramedics who were coming on the next shift.”
But for mental health reasons, it was recommended she not mention the miners’ loved ones in the emotionally charged setting. “The social workers said that we can’t talk about their families too much,” she recalls. “We had to keep their spirits up, and talk about more entertaining, silly stuff.”
The paramedics and rescuers also sent their ID cards down the pipe to the miners, so they knew what everyone looked like. “They gave everyone nicknames,” says Karen. “Mine was Smiley.”
Karen recalls the men were delivered food through the pipe, including chicken sandwiches and omelettes. A nutritionist also sent the energy drink Sustagen. “They hated that,” says Karen, laughing. “They would say they were drinking it, but they weren’t. They hid it in little rock crevices.”
In a pre-dawn moment that was viewed by millions throughout the nation and around the world, the miners were finally freed on May 9. Karen was there to greet them at the surface. “When they actually walked out of the mine there was so much relief,” she recalls. “Everyone just cried. I got to give them a hug. It was a very emotional time.”
Suddenly celebrities, Todd and Brant appeared on 60 Minutes in a reported $2.6 million deal. Neither man worked underground again. Brant moved into real estate. Todd, who suffered depression and post traumatic stress disorder, worked in sales and other jobs. Both have also worked as motivational speakers.
A 2008 inquest found that the mining activity at Beaconsfield caused a seismic event that led to the rockfall.
Today, Karen, who at 58 still works as a paramedic, as does her husband Daryl, remembers the rescue as an extraordinary team effort of expertise, bravery and resilience. “It was really nice to be able to work with a team of other paramedics and have a successful outcome,” she says. “Everyone did their part. To have a happy ending, with Todd and Brant walking out, was amazing.”
