Summer Issue 2010 - cfmeu

REMEMBERING WEST GATE
with Mick Buchan
40 years on, West Gate pain lingers
“The workers were
used to retrieve the
injured and dead
bodies; as soon as the
last body was removed
all the workers were
sent packing.’’
Tom Watson, current CFMEU C&G
National President, was a 22-yearold
rigger working on the West Gate
Bridge when it collapsed in 1970.
A few weeks before the fateful day,
he had been working on the 112-
metre span that fell, killing 35 of his
workmates, but was transferred to
the Port Melbourne side of the Yarra
River. His job there was to load steel
girders and equipment on to barges
and send them across the river. “I
was working on the river's edge, it
was 11.50am on the Thursday and
we had just done the last load and
were about to head to the lunch
sheds when I heard this big crack,”
Tom remembers. “I looked up and
saw it coming down.”
The members of the gang he had
been working with all died. “Things
that happen in life make you what
you are. This was like being in a war
zone. Wars change people and this
changed me.” As a result, Tom
dedicated his life to making
workplaces safer by becoming a
union official dealing in
Occupational Health and Safety.
At 11.50 am on 15 October 2010 at
the same time bridge collapsed,
survivors, friends and family
gathered at the site to mark the
40th anniversary of the disaster
and remember those lost.
It took six days to remove the last
body, that of boilermaker Barney
Butters. Within a week the riggers,
the carpenters, the boilermakers,
the engineers – all the workmen –
were given their final wages and
literally sent packing. They were left
to deal with the disaster, the loss of
their friends and workmates, on
their own. “We all went to funerals
the following week – there was no
counselling for us, the workers, or
for the widows,” Tom Watson says.
“I turned to drink, there was
something wrong if you didn't. You
would go to a cemetery where you
knew there would be five or six
funerals on that day. So you just sat
in the car with a car fridge waiting in
between funerals.”
For anyone like Tom, who lives in
Melbourne's west, the West Gate
Bridge is a vital, if congested, entry
point to the city. So it looms large in
people's lives.
“I drive over or under it every day –
and the memories are always there,
you can't get away from it,” he said.
Tom found another job on a
construction site within a few
months, but it was hard to focus.
“Nobody was helping you, there
was no support, no one to take the
pressure off,” he said. “But that's
how it was in those days – we've
come a long way in 40 years.”
Construction Worker – Summer 2010 Page 37
CFMEU