Royal Commission
The royal commission that was held at the time of the retrieval of bodies after the fire, and despite various theories as to the cause of the fire, an open verdict remained.
Although Blainey covers the details of the disaster in The Peaks of Lyell, writing 40 years after the event, there were still variations upon the "official" versions of the event, amongst "old timers" in Queenstown. 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. Also one recurring theme in some of the stories was the rumour or suggestion of the presence of a woman disguised as a man working underground.
At the Centenary of the event at the Queenstown Heritage and Arts Festival Peter Schulze's book An Engineer Speaks of Lyell elaborates an argument that the most likely cause of the disaster was an electrical fault
Read more about this topic: 1912 North Mount Lyell Disaster
Famous quotes containing the words royal and/or commission:
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Against infection and the hand of war,
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—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Children cannot eat rhetoric and they cannot be sheltered by commissions. I don’t want to see another commission that studies the needs of kids. We need to help them.”
—Marian Wright Edelman (20th century)