North Mount Lyell disaster

[4] The rescue plan involved the transportation of breathing equipment from one of the Victorian mining towns to Queenstown, via a speedy shipping across the Bass Strait and the alleged fastest times by engines on the Emu Bay Railway, the Government Strahan–Zeehan Railway line between Zeehan and Regatta Point, and from there by the Abt line to Queenstown.

On 14 October, rescuers lowered 1,100 feet (340 m) of rope with a signal gong attached to the end down the main shaft of the mine.

[7] As a result of the fire, initially 42 people died; the bodies were buried in unmarked graves in the Queenstown General cemetery.

One of the miners, Albert Gadd, who escaped death and then re-entered the mine to assist in the rescue efforts, was hospitalised in Launceston and died on 20 February 1913 from carbon monoxide poisoning.

Some of these are aired and detailed in Bradshaw's verbatim record of the newspaper reports and the royal commission, as well as being incorporated into Crawford's recent novel.

A number of themes arise from reading Blainey, and others on the subject: the rise of trade unionism on the west coast at the time, and the lack of preparedness for such disasters by the mining companies.

At the Centenary of the event at the Queenstown Heritage and Arts Festival Peter Schulze's book An Engineer Speaks of Lyell[12] elaborates an argument that the most likely cause of the fire was an electrical fault[13] as a result of faulty installation of the pump motor at the 700 ft level.

Schulze, who had access to more documents than Blainey and the twin advantages of an electrical engineering background and mining experience, concludes that the Royal Commission process was manipulated to give a result that best suited the company, for whom an adverse finding could have been financially ruinous.

Part of the celebrations included a collection of songs entitled Fire Underground performed by The West Coast Singers, an ensemble of vocalists organized and directed by Kerrie Maguire.

[16][17][18][19][20] The West Coast Singers toured Tasmania with this concert in the following months, including performances at the Cygnet and Tamar Valley Folk Festivals in January 2013.

[21] The tour wrapped up with a performance at the Paragon Theatre, Queenstown in June 2013, on the 100th anniversary of the last funeral of the disaster's victims.