BHP's book of work fatalities found

NEWCASTLE Industrial Heritage Association office-holders Aubrey Brooks and Bob Cook say it will take some time to work out how to best use the list of steelworks deaths supplied by BHP Billiton and added to by the Newcastle Herald.

Both men said on Monday they were overwhelmed by the response to the news that BHP Billiton had handed over a modified version of a register of steelworks fatalities found in the company’s archives in Victoria.

As luck would have it, Monday is the day that members of the association meet each week at the former BHP laboratory building on the steelworks site to chew the fat and to do anything that needs doing around the Muster Point and the new memorial unveiled last month.

‘‘We did spend a bit of time reading the Herald today,’’ Mr Brooks said.

He again thanked BHP Billiton for its gesture, and said many others were similarly surprised.

He read a text he received, which said: ‘‘I just heard you on the ABC news. I didn’t think BHP would ever release such information. Someone made a gutsy and proper decision. It restores one’s hope.’’

 Mr Brooks said ‘‘people have no idea how many people I have quizzed at BHP about this book over the years’’.

‘‘So to finally get it now is a wonderful first step. We will have to sit down now and wait until we get all the names together and then sort out all the rights and wrongs, and look at it, which could take a long time,’’ Mr Brooks said.

‘‘It took five years of effort to build the memorial and we got it done in time for the centenary of steelmaking. This list is a wonderful first step along a massive journey.’’

Mr Cook said the association’s members were ‘‘so pleased that BHP Billiton had taken the decision to be open about the information and we are pleased with the result’’.

‘‘But it’s a different thing talking about an authoritative list, and then deciding what to do with it, and at this stage I don’t think I can say we are ready to put names up on a wall,’’ Mr Cook said.

‘‘It’s the beginning of a process, and we will let nature take its course.’’

When Mr Cook finally got to hold the book in Newcastle last week, he was amazed at what he was seeing, but he still had his doubts.

‘‘I’m still not sure this is the book,’’ Mr Cook told BHP Billiton’s Darren Bowey at the time.

It was widely believed that the ledger was handwritten in copperplate or a similarly ornate script but the first seven pages are type-written, and were apparently done at the one time, updating earlier records.

The next 16 pages were hand-written, and started with a death in 1955.

But the last of the typed pages contained the record of a contractor fatality in 1962, further clouding the chronology.

Now that BHP Billiton has recovered the document, it will hopefully make it available to historians – it would be of immense interest to Newcastle Museum and the University of Newcastle – who may be able to reconcile its complexities.

If there are other ledgers of BHP steelworks deaths, they were not among the five boxes of Newcastle documents that Mr Bowey obtained from the archives.

BHP Billiton has redacted the information being handed out publicly for privacy reasons, but the details in the original ledgers pertaining to each accident are straightforward and blunt.

On one page two shunters are ‘‘crushed while coupling’’ within a year of each other.

 A painter is ‘‘struck by (a) lorry’’.

Another man is ‘‘gassed’’.

More than half a century on, a reader can only imagine what must have happened to a mechanic who ‘‘uncoupled (an) acid pipe under pressure’’. 

Men are repeatedly hit by loads of steel, or run down by rail cars and killed by explosions of molten steel or iron.

One man was ‘‘inspecting (a) jammed ash chute’’ when it ‘‘suddenly opened, enveloping him in steam water (and) ash mixture’’.

As the list moves  into the 1950s, an increasing number of the deaths are classified as non-work related.