Pike River 10 years on: Stuck in the sadness of the past
Sunday, 13 September 2020
Before the Pike River explosion, Brenda Wilson had imagined a different life, but life didn’t work out how she planned. AMY WRIGHT reports.
Imagine a loved one is killed suddenly at work. They just disappear from your life, no warning, no funeral, no farewell.
How do you move on? What if you can’t?
Brenda Wilson once imagined a different life for herself. It was in a different place, with a different person. But things didn’t work out how she imagined.
Ten years ago Wilson lived in a cottage she owned near Hokitika on the West Coast. Her partner, who lived in a neighbouring house, was helping her do it up. He worked at Pike River mine.
**READ MORE:
* Pike River survivor sees loader for first time since explosion 10 years ago
* Pike River families remember eight years after tragedy
* Pike River: The 29 miners who died
* Pike River: Five years without a body to bury
**
Wilson has tried to put it all behind her. She has put physical distance between herself and the West Coast, the events of November 2010. But moving away has not been enough.
'It's not a happy story,' she warns when Stuff calls, interested to see how she was doing as the 10-year anniversary of the Pike River mine explosion approaches.
Stuff first met Wilson five days after the first explosion at Pike River on November 19, 2010. Her partner John Hale, 45, was missing, having failed to return from his Friday shift. The families and media were being told there was a chance the 29 missing men could still be alive, sheltering in well-stocked refuges throughout the mine, cracking jokes and waiting for rescue.
A second explosion at the unstable mine ended those hopes later the same day we met. Wilson was told Hale was dead in a brutal and bungled way as she stood with his mother in a Greymouth sports stadium.
As a couple who lived apart, Wilson did not benefit from the money allocated to the relatives of the mine’s victims.
All she wants is to place a photo plaque on the Pike River memorial near the mine before the November 19 anniversary. She cannot afford the cost of the plaque and this bothers her, especially since many others have photo memorials. She has the perfect photo in mind – Hale is dressed in his work gear, grinning into the camera.
A creative pair, Wilson and Hale had been friends first who slowly became a couple. They both loved music, fishing and socialising.
Then a solo mother of three children going through a separation, Wilson thought she had finally found “the one”.
“I was really angry for a long time, bitter and angry, and I had to get over it. I felt robbed of our future together, I was gutted.”
After receiving counselling for her grief and anger, she realised she had to leave Hokitika.
“I needed to get away from the house, needed space. It was all there in front of me. I had to move away and come here and try to get over it.
“It was a wake-up call, I realised that the most important thing in life was family.”
She has lived in Dunedin for six years, spending more time with her elderly parents, leaning on the support of close family. She works part-time in a cafe and hopes to find a full-time job. She hopes to be able to eventually buy her own home.
But she still feels stuck. Unable to move forward. Pike River mine and its contents is never far from the news, or her thoughts.
“Pike has been an endless struggle in my life. It’s never far from my mind. All I want is accountability and closure.”
Wilson has seen video footage of Hale at work just before the mine blew. He was the mine’s taxi driver, responsible for ferrying the workers up and down the mine’s 2.3-kilometre access tunnel (the drift).
The footage shows him bring 10 men out and deliver them to their changing rooms. He returns to the mine entrance for his final pick up before finishing his shift. Wilson says she saw him sitting clearly in the taxi alone, stopped at the tunnel’s red light, calmly waiting for it to change. Unaware he was minutes from death.
The light turns green. He drives in. Six minutes later the mine explodes.
She wonders: how far did he get in? Is he still in the tunnel or did he make it into the mine’s workings. The tunnel is now blocked by a rockfall. Did he make it past that, could he be buried underneath it?
A team is currently working its way through the mine’s access tunnel. A loader belonging to survivor Russell Smith has recently been recovered. Will they find Hale’s remains?
“I’m now thinking, are they going to come to him? I don’t want to get my hopes up though because they have been dashed in the past. I don't want to get my hopes up but it would be good if they came across the taxi.
“He was the last one in. He will be in that drift.”
The future is unknown for Pike River, and the bodies of the 29 men who remain trapped there a decade on. Wilson too feels trapped in the sadness of her past.
“It hasn’t been an easy ride and Pike River doesn’t go away.
“I need closure. I don’t want to be staying like this forever.”
But there is one glimmer of good news as the anniversary approaches, a significant milestone that will stir difficult memories for many people connected to the disaster.
After Stuff contacted the Pike River Families Group Committee, efforts are now under way for a photo plaque for Hale at the Pike River memorial.