Title: Bad Ground: Inside the Beaconsfield Mine Rescue
Author: Tony Wright, Todd Russell & Brant Webb
Rating Out of 5: 4 (Really good read!)
My Bookshelves: Australian authors, Australian history, Memoirs
Pace: Medium
Format: Novel
Year: 2012

I’ve been hanging to read this for about 6 months now. But, considering my other half actually works in an underground mine that is very similar to Beaconsfield (albeit much bigger), I decided to wait until he had a huge chunk of time off… I didn’t really need to be imagining him in this position in the long week that he’s away…

There are always moments of local or global history that will stick in our minds. Todd and Brant walking out of the mine on national news is one of them for me (Steve Irwin dying is another one). Which made not only visiting Beaconsfield, but reading this incredibly surreal. I mean, I was in high school when this happened. And I remember it being plastered all over the news. But to my teenage self… it was so removed from reality. Not anymore and I’m incredibly glad I got a chance to read about this rescue and tragedy.

Honestly, I wasn’t expecting to enjoy this book so much. Mostly because I thought it would just be a recount of Todd and Brant’s experiences. Instead, it focused a lot more on everyone else who was impacted. Larry Knight’s family gets a lot of attention (as they should). The crew supervisor and the rescue team. The families who were topside waiting for news. It’s a great reminder that tragedy doesn’t just strike one person, but rather impacts everyone I our little vortexes of life.

Most of the time I read memoirs, biographies, and true stories because they’re easy to put down and walk away from. Perfect for when life is busy, and I don’t have heaps of time to read. That’s not the case with this. I was constantly itching to pick it back up and bury my nose between the pages. I don’t know if it’s because this is so much closer to home than most booms in this genre, or if it was just brilliantly done… but regardless, definitely at the top of my recommendations list.

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The Things I Wish I’d Known ->

Image source: Murdoch Books