04 From the Dead | Missing: Presumed Dead

Piia Wirsu (VO): It's a grey, drizzly day in Melbourne…

An excited crowd jostles around the parade ring for a good squiz at the horses, about to race the Caulfield Cup…

Ladies lining up for fashions on the field, while gents avail themselves of a beverage … or four.

And bookies shout their odds to the punters…

Piia Wirsu (VO): The race is on.

ARCHIVAL RACE CALL

Mick Doleman: Malcolm McCarroll, was a, a mad punter, loved a punt, betting on horses.

Piia Wirsu (VO): 650km away from the heaving Caulfield Cup crowds, 18 year old Mick Dolemen and eight other men are wet, cold, and cramped… in the vast ocean off Tasmania.

Mick Doleman: So Malcolm says, well, I, I, I got a fair idea what the field is.

Piia Wirsu (VO): Malcolm was a 33-year-old curly haired young man, with a cheeky smile… and he had 10 bucks on that race.

Mick Doleman: I'll rattle the, the race off and you just pick which horse you want.

Piia Wirsu (VO): So there in an emergency life raft, not a horse in sight, these men raced the Caulfield Cup, cheering on their horse to the finish.

Mick Doleman: So, we go through it, I can't remember now what horse I picked.

Piia Wirsu (VO): Suffice to say, he didn't win.

Mick Doleman: You've got to keep your spirits up. You've got to find a way to unblock all that, um, where you are and what's happening and, um, because there's always something going on.

Piia Wirsu (VO): The crew of the Blythe Star were now well past the point at which all the experts said they should have died…

But here they were, hanging in there.

Mick Doleman: We are in a desperate situation, so you just haven't got time to, you know, think of anything other than surviving. And getting out of this bloody mess.

Piia Wirsu (VO): This is Expanse, season two .. Episode Four .. Missing: Presumed Dead.

Days into their ordeal .. the crew of the Blythe Star kept a constant lookout – desperate for a glimpse of another ship to save them.

Mick Doleman: It was late night. It would probably be 11 o'clock at night. Something in that order. We were all just sitting around in the raft, Ken Jones was doing the lookout.

Piia Wirsu (VO): Ken Jones, heartbreaker… and natural born leader, had taken Mick under his wing. Always with an encouraging word.

Mick Doleman: you would stand up in the raft and the curtain or the canopy, you'd open it up and just have your head sticking out of it so you could see what's going on.

And, then he put his head down into the raft and said, there's fishing boats out here.

He was, you know, chafing at the bit. Um, and all, so we, um, of course we're in, in the canopy, so we can't see anything and we're dying to bloody have a look. But, um, There's only room for one.

Piia Wirsu (VO): This news is electric. This is their chance to be saved.

Two of them grab the paddles and try to get closer.

Mick Doleman: and the only fishing boats that were around that area at the time where these Japanese fishing boats, they had a mother ship and they used to have a heap of fishing vessels.

And so Ken went back up and he said, I'm going to put the flare out.

Piia Wirsu (VO): He rips open a hand-held flare, It burns molten in the darkness, Mick can see it through the canopy as the acrid, burnt smell reaches his nostrils.

Ken gripped desperately onto the burning tube, as it burned his hand and forearm.

Mick Doleman: A short period after that, he came back into the, into the raft and said they've turned, they've turned and gone, gone, gone away.

And, uh, we, we were convinced that, the Japanese seafarers had left us because they were poaching in the, um, in, uh, domestic waters.

And, um, we were. deeply depressed on that basis. How could a seafarer leave other seafarers in a life raft?

Piia Wirsu (VO): It was these moments when Ken Jones would haul the others out of depression, inspiring, cajoling and encouraging them to just stick it out.

Mick Doleman: He'd build your confidence because of his confidence and, um, you trusted his judgement on all things.

I don't think, uh, we, we would have all got out of there, uh, without his intervention and engagement.

Piia Wirsu: What would you say to yourself when things were at their worst and there were those really low moments?

Mick Doleman: Uh, I'd probably say to myself, I wish I wasn't bloody here. Um, but, um, you just, you're just wrong with the punches and, hope that everybody's in the same frame of mind as you are, uh, if we need all hands on deck, um, to save ourselves.

Piia Wirsu (VO): The men's drift continued… the wind that had started by blowing them ever further south had switched around and pushed them back toward Tasmania.

The land loomed and then disappeared on the horizon as they were pushed around with the current and winds.

By Caulfield Cup day they could spot Tasman lighthouse.. perched at the very bottom of the Tasman Peninsula… an austere finger of land dripping off Tasmania's south east.

The colonisers 200 years ago housed the worst convicts here… it's such a savage place mother nature was a better than any gaoler… if they escape — let them try their luck in the impenetrable scrub .. or else take their chances with the sharks…

But still, land!

Mick Doleman: on one occasion, Malcolm McCarroll, um, wanted to swim to, Tasman Island where the lighthouse is. We were using reflectors and all sorts of things to try and get their attention but never, never, never got their attention.

And Malcolm said, I'll tell you what, I reckon I could swim to that loading dock

I said, are you serious? he said, yeah, I'm a reasonable swimmer.

I said, mate, that's a long way. And you're not in your fit condition. It's really risky stuff.

He said, no, I think I can do it.

I said, mate, if you swim with a rope wrapped around you to that landing, what happens if a shark gets you?

He's then going to come back and find out that there's more of us in the raft and you'll be the appetite and we'll be the main course and the dessert.

So he gave that a bit of thought and he said, no, you're probably right, we better not do that.

Piia Wirsu (VO): By now the Pizza Hut in Springvale, where Mick and Joanie had started their unlikely romance, was a long way away.

Joanie had been waiting days for news that Mick had been found after his ship had disappeared without a trace.

Joanie Doleman: Towards the end, Mick's mum was convinced that Mick was not coming back. It didn't matter what anybody said, she was convinced he wasn't coming back.

Piia Wirsu (VO): Instead of talking about where they'd go out next weekend .. Joanie was sitting in Mick's family living room wondering if she'd ever see him again.

Joanie Doleman: There was a pool table in the middle of the lounge room, it was the best thing and it did keep everybody, um, sane through some of the hard days.

They'd have a game of pool and just, um, try and keep their mind off what was going on at the time.

Piia Wirsu (VO): The house was packed day after day… people all perched on the couch and chairs around the pool table.. clinging on to what hope they could, a fog of smoke hanging over everything as people soothed their nerves with cigarettes …

Joanie Doleman: We were all watching the news when something was said about the searchers being called off and…

NEWS READ: The nine-day air search for the Blythe Star and its crew of 10 was called off today. Mr Chris Langford, son of one of the crewmen of the missing ship spent all today searching the sea off the west coast of Tasmania.

Joanie Doleman: We all looked at each other. We couldn't believe it when we heard that.

I remember you could hear a pin drop in their home

That was devastating.

We couldn't believe it. So Tommy, his dad rang people to find out if it was true. And of course it was.

I thought, Oh my God, maybe Mick… Has died, he's not gonna come back. He's, he maybe the ship did sink and they have gone down with the ship there was a lot of people there crying, his mum, his sisters, my sisters, everyone, everyone was crying and um, and then that turned into anger

Piia Wirsu (VO): Mick's dad Tommy was having none of it.

Joanie Doleman: He said, well, I'm not giving up, Joanie. And he just wouldn't give up I just left him because he was angry at the time, very angry that day and angry for days after.

And each day was just horrible. We were all saddened. Um, couldn't function properly. everybody still went to the Dolman home. Um, I don't think they knew what else to do, where else to go.

And that's all I wanted to do was be there with them. I felt while I was with them, I was close to Mick.

Doveton just went into mourning. Nothing like this had ever happened in Doveton before

Piia Wirsu (VO): One of their own.. had been lost at sea. Declared dead. It was over for Mick.

16-year-old Robyn Simpson remembers her mum getting the call saying her dad Alf, cook on the ship, was missing, presumed dead.

Robyn Butcher: I could hear her saying no, no, why? And I said, what's, what's wrong, Mum? What's happening? And she, she told me, she said, they've called the search off for your father. And we have to presume he's dead. And. I just ran to her and gave her a hug

Piia Wirsu (VO): Robyn's mum started calling around, to break the news. And then started organising a memorial service for Alf, on the advice of the authorities.

Robyn Butcher: for the sake of the family, it would be best to have a memorial service and, um, to give the family some closure.

Piia Wirsu: Having plans for a memorial service in place, it must have seemed very final, I imagine.

Robyn Butcher: Well, yes, it was, and that was hard, but that's, that was what they told us to do, because when there's no bodies, and there's no, you don't know what happened, you have to have closure.

You can't move on if you don't.

I just thought, well, hmm, it must be real, you know, he mustn't be coming back

Piia Wirsu: How on earth did you begin to process that news that, that your dad is lost, presumed dead?

Robyn Butcher: It's, it's just, I think you sort of Like you're in a dream. It's like, it's so unreal. It's like you're in another world and you sort of walk, you, you, you're going on automatic pilot.

Someone would come and you, you don't even know they're there because, you know, you just, you're just out of it.

Piia Wirsu (VO): And ten and three-quarter-year old Mark Eagles? He was still hanging on to hope that his dad John Eagles – who loved opera and tinkering with land rovers – was okay.

Mark Eagles: We were still under the hope that Dad would be found and we never switched off that. I never did anyway.

Piia Wirsu (VO): By now, the remaining, shipwrecked crew could see land periodically — they'd paddle like madmen to get close during the day, and then the night would steal them back out to sea…

But these views of land were still a glimmer of hope.

Mick Doleman: It was comforting because you, you know, you're not lost completely to the world.

Piia Wirsu (VO): It'd been a really long week stuck together in this godawful raft… floating around getting hungrier and thirstier and colder.

Mick Doleman: There was one point not far from the Tasman island. these big pinnacles had come, come outta the sea. They're huge. And Mick Power was paddling and said, look, you better have a look at this. We're getting too close to these, uh, rocks.

Piia Wirsu (VO): What Mick Power was looking at were rocks that could shred the raft and pulverise the men inside.

I've seen them. They're sheer, and there is no clambering up them at the best of times.

Mick Doleman: We're getting too close to these, uh, rocks. I said, no, it was beautiful. It was a beautiful day. It was almost like a sailing day. So I went to the opening of the canopy And to my horror, we were that close that you could almost touch these, uh, pinnacles.

Piia Wirsu (VO): Six-metre waves were relentlessly drawing them toward these rock pillars .. crashing on them with enormous force.

Mick Doleman: And I got the other paddle and we, we paddled like mad You'd get, um, right up to the opening. to lean out of the raft, um, And you'd be too abreast, um, and you would dig deep into the water with your paddle.

And they're not designed for that type of, uh, activity. at one point said to him, do you think we can fit through that gap between the two of them?

No. He said, no way. We've just got to paddle hard.

And um, I was cramped up and my hamstrings and calf muscles really screaming for pain. And we got around these pinnacles, um, huge

Piia Wirsu (VO): They'd skirted disaster… again. and were floating now in a bay.

Mick Doleman: Both Mick and I collapsed with exhaustion and asked the other, another, asked a couple of others to have a paddle of which they didn't bother.

Um, and, uh, we blew back out to sea.

That was a, that was a day where the mayhem, um, in the boat, in the raft. Um, uh, was potentially possible because, um, I won't mention who they were, but these two blokes wouldn't paddle. And um, um, I was filthy on it and, uh, I don't know whether it would have made much difference in terms of getting further into that bay, but they didn't.

And um, all of us felt shitty about the whole thing and we were really getting to the end of the tether.

Piia Wirsu (VO): It's hardly surprising tempers started fraying. Honestly it's more surprising the group hadn't cannabilised itself already.

Mick Doleman: Exhaustion, fatigue, no water, um, no food. Um, we were, we were getting very, very close. And, um, some of the older guys were, were not very well at all.

Piia Wirsu (VO): At this point, the men's bodies were on the point of collapse.

Ken Jones was trying his best to get everyone to take a stint on the paddles .. it's impossible to know why two of them refused to pick them up…

Out of respect to their families, Mick didn't want name and shame .. though in researching this story the records are pretty clear…

And one of those two men, was also someone who in another moment had done something incredibly brave .. but in this moment? They left their crew mates hanging…

Maybe they'd given themselves up for dead already… maybe they didn't just have the strength.

Or maybe .. we're all many things in different moments… and we all have a breaking point.

Whatever the reason, they missed that opportunity to make it in to land.

Mick Doleman: Anyway. We, uh, we drifted. And then we saw what looked like a road along the foreshore, um, and we paddled right into it, uh, then realised it wasn't a road. It's a rock formation that looked like a road. And now we were being pushed onto the rocks, um, to be chopped up again.

And we spent all night, uh, all night. Hanging on to, um, uh, kelp and, um, seagrass, um, all night to keep us in, in, in shape.

Piia Wirsu (VO): The next morning was clear and calm.

Mick Doleman: We had shifted a considerable way up the coast, um, and most of us were non compos mentis, just completely gone.

I came too, and there was Deep Glen Bay.

Piia Wirsu (VO): Deep Glen Bay… — I feel like bay gives the wrong impression here. a small inlet on Tasmania's east coast, It's surrounded by vertical rock faces..

The short beach? Well it's more a collection of coffee-table sized boulders .. and the hill behind is this dense, wet scrub .. at a mean vertical angle.

Mick Doleman: We ended up being washed up on the rocks. I jumped into the water, because we were that close to the rocks, and Mick Power also jumped in, and I think Malcolm McCarroll was third, and we pulled the raft up onto the rocks,

Piia Wirsu (VO): For the first time in nine days… Mick's feet had solid land under them.

Mick Doleman: we realised that, um, we couldn't stand up, we couldn't walk, couldn't move, and we kept collapsing, because our legs had lost their functionality because we were in a rubber raft bouncing around for all those days.

Piia Wirsu (VO): Mick and the other eight men weren't going to let that stop them from getting ashore after all this time. They're on hands and knees.

Mick Doleman: It took time for us to crawl over to a more hospitable bit of grass and thankfully a water, a fresh water stream of which we drank plenty of.

That's the only bit of luck, um, we had in landing there. to have a water supply. because once we had surveyed our, our location, we realised that we were out of the fat and into the fire, because it was just hundreds of metres high, all the coastline, and near impossible to get out.

Piia Wirsu (VO): The nine crew left, from the devastated Blythe Star had finally made it to land. But they didn't seem to be a great deal better off…

No sign of human habitation for donkeys… their bodies wasted away.. Chief engineer John Eagles still sporting a burn on his lower leg from shutting off the engine as the ship sank .. Ken Jones with a gash on his face from swimming out of his submerged cabin.

Now, how the hell were they going to get out of this pit of bay?

Piia Wirsu: How did you feel looking up at that incredibly inhospitable and daunting challenge that lay ahead of you to get out?

Mick Doleman: Yes. Well, it was daunting I made the decision that I was, I was the youngest and the fittest I think. and I said, well, I'm gonna have a crack and, um, I'll come back, when I find something.

So, Stan Leary, uh, gave me, uh, a 10 note. Um, which he said, if you see a shop, will you get a carton of cigarettes for me?

So I put this 10 note, uh, down me jocks cause I never had any pants or anything. And off I went.

Piia Wirsu (VO): Mick spent hours trying to scale the near vertical scrub .. pushing his way through bush that tore at the skin and seemed like a solid wall more so than a collection of plants.

Mick Doleman: couldn't get anywhere. Couldn't get anywhere. So I came back to the. To where everybody was hanging out. And, um, Later that, uh, afternoon we had another crack.

Piia Wirsu (VO): Unofficial leader of the marooned crew Ken Jones, along with rockstar lookalike Mick Power and young Mick Doleman, rallied themselves for another assault on the terrain.

Mick Doleman: we tried the other, other side on the, and, uh, Same thing, too difficult.

Mick Power fell when he was trying to climb.

Piia Wirsu (VO): They were in no fit state to be copping falls.. Mick Power now had a suspected punctured lung and broken ankle. And the cook Alf Simpson was carrying injuries from another failed attempt.

Some of them start thinking… maybe we're going to have to get back into that raft to find somewhere more hospitable to land.

Mick Doleman: I'm not critical of whoever said it, I'm pretty sure it was the chief engineer.

Um, and, uh, I said, you're, you're kidding. I'm not getting back in that raft for anything.

Piia Wirsu (VO): Mick's dead serious. That is not going to happen.

Mick Doleman: And, um, I got my knife and started to cut it up.

Piia Wirsu (VO): So.. that option's out.

Which I imagine can't have gone down brilliantly with all the other crew

The men try again and again to find a way.

Mick Doleman: With no, no success and we all came back.

Then we, then we took a, uh, just took a break and said, well, look, let's just lie down and rest for a day, 24 hours, just chill out, get the fresh water into us and we'll see what we can do.

I was a bit comatose and, and, uh, worn out. People were dreaming and, uh, hallucinating and, um, yelling out in their sleep and…

Piia Wirsu: That night must have been quite a long, difficult night.

Mick Doleman: Then. Yeah. Yeah, it was, and we could, we had no fire, we had no ability to light a fire, so it was just constantly cold.

Piia Wirsu (VO): Next day, Ken Jones, who's got his love Fran and a four-year-old daughter waiting at home, asks Mick to have yet another crack at trying to find a weakness in the landscape to get out.

Mick Doleman: And, um, I, um, failed again. I couldn't, couldn't get out.

Then I, I came back. And I, uh, I said to, uh, one of the guys, where's, uh, where's Ken?

He said he's over there, on, on that rock over there. I went over and, uh, there was Ken sitting on the look, on the, on the rock, looking out to sea.

And he was dead.

Piia Wirsu (VO): Ken had stripped off his jumper as one of his last acts. and he sat there in the chilly breeze, as though just having a rest.

Mick Doleman: He'd, uh, died of exhaustion. He was the standout leader, that bloke, and he was the last I would, I would have rated to die, um, at Deep Glen Bay.

I was so shocked that he died and, um, just couldn't believe it, um, it was really, really sad.

Piia Wirsu (VO): Then Mick catches sight of the chief Engineer, dad of the 10 and three-quarter year old Mark, John Eagles…

Mick Doleman: I then went down to the, um, the waterside, uh, the, uh, ocean where the, the raft was. And the chief engineer had died also.

And he was getting washed up and down in the, um, in the washer of the waves.

And I pulled him up onto the shoreline to keep him clear of that.

Piia Wirsu (VO): Just like Ken and his jumper, John Eagles had taken his overalls off in his last moments …

It might seem strange, but I've spoken to experts and it's actually not unusual for people suffering hypothermia

It's called paradoxical undressing, and basically, the body's temperature is so low that the brain can't make sense of what it's feeling .. and mistakes the extreme cold feeling as hot.

While the crew were in the covered life raft, they at least had some shared body heat. Now, out in the open and spread out, that heat evaporates instantly.

It was later found that Ken Jones also had acute pulmonary oedema .. basically fluid on the lungs.. which would have been a 000 call if he was home… and his organs were so stressed they were nowhere near the size they should have been.

And there's another reason why the body might suddenly shut down after all these days of acute stress.

A survival expert I've spoken to, remember Dr Nicole Anderson? , well she says that the flight fight and stress response these men had been living with for days now .. pumps up your heart rate and blood pressure..

Nicole Anderson: The relief of hitting land could actually deplete the stress response that was actually keeping them alive all that time.

Piia Wirsu (VO): That relief? Might have meant their blood pressure and heart rate plunged dangerously .. and in their depleted state, dehydrated, fatigued, – it might have been fatal.

Time has run out for the men… After all they've been through. Their bodies are shutting down.

And Mick knows it.

Mick Doleman: If we don't get help, there's going to be more of these blokes dead in the next few days.

So Alf, Malcolm McCarroll and myself had a bit of a chat and we said we're, we're going to walk out and we'll keep going to the point that we'll either die trying or get help.

Piia Wirsu (VO): This is From the Dead, season two of Expanse. Made on Awabakal land and the land of the Stoney Creek Nations.. hosted by me, Piia Wirsu. My producer and sound engineer is the unparalleled Grant Wolter. Executive producer is Blythe Moore, Senior producer is me. With thanks to Liz Gwynn and Helen Shield for additional production and research.

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