For two weeks, miners Brant Webb and Todd Russell had been trapped a kilometre down a Tasmanian gold mine. The disaster, and its heroes, made international news.
Woman's Day writer Jenny Brown and photographer David Hahn recall the trials and tribulations of covering the story out on the field and on deadline...
Jenny Brown, staff writer
We went down to Tasmania and drove to Beauty Point where Brant Webb lives and we still didn't know if we had the story or not.
It was rather tense because we were on a strict deadline. We spent the night there still not knowing whether we were going to talk to them and meanwhile we thought we would make friends with some of the locals.
We were in the pub and the local barman said, "Oh look, there's Mrs Webb over there with some of her in-laws," and sure enough it was Mrs Webb.
I was just about to introduce myself when the barman said, "She doesn't like the press so I wouldn't go near her if I were you, love."
This was not reassuring. In the meanwhile, we had booked into The Beauty Point Hotel which is a delightful hotel but they didn't have any internet connections or any high tech stuff, in fact even the phone by the bed didn't work.
Photographer David Hahn and I decided we needed to find someone with a computer so the barman said we could come home with him and use his computer. His wife wasn't impressed when these strangers turned up.
Unfortunately, the computer was way too slow for us. We needed to think of another solution — but first we needed to get the story.
Meeting the survivors
We had met Brant and Todd and their families the day before. Brant and his family are lovely people. They say they are two big kids and they are. They married very young and have been inseparable — they just love having fun together and with their families.
Todd is more reserved than Brant, he's very much the strong silent type. He's happiest when he's out shooting deer. They lived in an ordinary suburban house except that there was all these deer heads on the walls.
They were definitely both traumatised — and why wouldn't you be? I think they are both very different people and they were probably both with the ideal counterpart in a way — Brant is very jolly with a lot of bravado, and Todd is the one who probably sustained them in the long term.
They are nice guys and they found it very difficult to cope with the fact that one day they were miners in this obscure little corner of Tasmania and the next moment they're global heroes. Understandably, they found it difficult to deal with.
When we arrived at the Russells that next day to get our story we found Todd and his wife and Brant but no sign of his wife. It became very apparent that she had been very traumatised by everything that had gone on.
Somehow we had to convince her that before she left we needed to take her picture. Brant said, "She's not going to like it." He said if we wanted the photo we'd have to come around later that night at around 8.
Cutting it fine
We had three hours to kill in Beauty Point and we were panicking because we were so close to deadline with only half a story. So we went round before 8pm and they weren't there and we just sat in this dark street waiting and waiting, feeling sick because we just thought they had done a runner and weren't coming back. We got quite nervous that we were losing the story. It was only about 45 minutes but it seemed like an eternity before they finally turned up.
Finally this car came down the street, and we nearly cried. We knocked on the front door and eventually Brant appeared and in we went.
It was a cluttered family home. And there was this whole tribe of kids cooking pizzas in the kitchen. As it turned out the Webbs house is party central; the hub of the neighbourhood.
We were nattering away and it was pretty obvious that Mrs Webb was reluctant to participate but we got some comments out of her and the kids and by this time it was about 9.30pm and she just refused point blank to have a photo taken.
She went into the hallway and Brant said he'd talk her around. We could hear the hushed but heated conversation they were having. And we said to Brant, this is our story — it's about the families and how they survived having their husbands and fathers trapped inside that mine for two weeks.
Finally, we persuaded the kids to tell her that she would look great because she kept saying, "I've got nothing to wear, I'll look horrible, I haven't done my make-up," and so on.
We had to try every avenue of persuasion. Finally she said yes and we got out of there at 11pm at night.
Then we had to drive to Launceston and find a hotel. It was gone midnight and I had to start writing the story and David Hahn had to send the pictures. Every sentence seemed to take a half an hour because I was so tired.
I finally finished the story at 5am. David was still awake and sending the pictures through. By that time we were so past tired that we wandered around the streets of Launceston looking like two sleep deprived fools.
David Hahn, photographer
We were in Tasmania and had no idea if we had secured the story of the year with the miners Brant Webb and Todd Russell, who had been trapped underground for two weeks, as
Woman's Day's editor was still in negotiations with their agent.
I remember that Jenny Brown and I were starving. We were at a milk bar getting a burger and had just been served, when the phone call came through that they could do it — and do it now. We didn't even get to eat our burgers.
We had visited Todd and Brant the day before, for a meet-and-greet. We were in Todd's kitchen, and [
A Current Affair host] Tracy Grimshaw was there as well. They were just floored that Tracy, who's on their TV every night, was standing there in their kitchen. It was so surreal to them.
We were up all night writing and sending the pictures back to the office — it was 36 hours straight getting that one through.
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