Death at Appleton Dock

Peter Ross and workmates

Workmates tell of tragic death of their comrade as union pushes for safety code in national and international forums.

All work stopped at Appleton Dock in Melbourne for three days following the death of waterside worker Peter (Roscoe) Ross.

Two weeks later, many workers had still not returned to the job.

"They're not coming back," said Victorian Branch Secretary Kevin Bracken. "Some will never return."

It was the second death on the Australian wharves in six months - the third in three years. Two of the three fatalities were at Appleton Dock-and while the union pushes for a national and international safety code to ensure there are no more deaths some stevedoring workers with young families are leaving the industry. Their families say it's just not worth the risk.

"We just can't sit back and watch people continue to be killed on the job," said National Secretary Paddy Crumlin. "We're calling on the government for a national safety code. We're not waiting for another waterside worker to die. We've got industry on side, but if the government here won't act we're going global."

Peter (Roscoe) Ross, 56, was crushed to death against the ship's bulkhead by a load of steel down the hatch of the Cypriot Flag of Convenience vessel Cape Conway at Dubai World Ports, Appleton Dock, Melbourne at around 8.20 on Friday evening, January 19.

It was hot and humid - 28 degrees Celsius - hotter in the ship's hold. Everyone was sweating as they worked.

During the course of the day the labour removed six forty-foot containers, three new buses, around a dozen coils of electrical cable wire, tram track components and repositioned a boat before starting on the square tube steel.

"Roscoe was joking around, cheering us up during the shift. He kept us going on that stinking hot day," said workmate Darren Love. "He was a good team leader - made you feel he appreciated your work."

The three men Roscoe, Darren and Anthony were in the hatch discharging the pre-slung tubular steel using the ship's crane, when on the 11th hour of a 12 hour shift, Peter's last before he got out his new golf clubs and took a six week holiday with his partner Rhonda, things went wrong.

"We were just metres away down the stern when it happened," said Darren. "We saw it coming. We saw it all happen from start to finish. The whole situation unfolded in 2-3 seconds. We were looking at it coming at us. We were all in the line of fire. There was no telling who it would hit. It took off from the bow, starboard section of the hatch and swung to the stern, coming at us at a 30-degree angle. We were yelling for Peter to get out of the way - screaming at the top of our lungs: 'Look out, Pete, jump.' But Peter had already seen it and was scrambling to get away. I was getting ready to try to jump on top as it came at me. I was poised ready."

A split second later the steel struck Peter squarely in the chest pinning him against the port side of the hatch.

" I shouted: 'Take the lift. He's pinned. Trust me. Just take the lift'. We ran to him as he fell forward. We checked for vitals but we couldn't get a pulse or breathing. He wasn't cut at all.

"I grabbed the radio and called out 'Roscoe's been struck. We need an ambulance,' then went straight into mechanical mode. I gave him mouth to mouth, while Anthony was trying to find a pulse. I got him to take over so I could start heart massage. We got that going 15-20 seconds after he was struck. Craig rushed into the hold a couple minutes later to give us a hand. He took over the mouth to mouth and Anthony again tried to find a pulse. We continued and didn't stop until ambulance crews relieved us around 20 minutes later."

Darren knew what he was doing. He'd saved lives before - his neighbour's 18-month baby; a scuba diver at the beach; the old chap next door after a heart attack; a bloke electrocuted on an industrial site. He'd kept them all going until help arrived.

On top of the hatch workmate Charlie Garcia, a mobile to his ear, relayed messages from the approaching ambulance crews.

"'Don't stop whatever happens', he kept telling me. 'Don't stop. Keep going.' I knew if we kept going, if there was any hope at all the ambos would try to get him going. But we didn't get any response."

After the ambulance crew were lowered in by crane the three waterside workers stood back. They watched Roscoe lying there as the medics worked to save him.

"After the ambos took over it was a bit of blur," said Darren. "We were standing down the stern. Waiting."

Minutes later the ambulance workers stopped. They came over to where Darren stood alongside Anthony:

"'Your mate is not responding,' they told us. 'He's gone.' We were gutted - absolutely gutted."

Darren had started on the wharves only April last year. He'd seen loads move before but nowhere near as much. He knew Roscoe. Everyone knew Roscoe.

"It's gutted me. It really has. I can't believe it," he said. "I found his hat. He had the Swan's sticker on it. I handed it to my workmate Dicky and said 'Don't lose that mate. That's Roscoe's.'"

Branch secretary Kevin Bracken got a call around 8.30:

"My son was working his first shift at Appleton. He said 'you'd better get down here quick. There's been a bad accident.' But I didn't know anyone was killed until I got a call from management on my way there. Roscoe had grown up in Port Melbourne. He was a genuine bloke who was held in high regard by all. He was a rock solid, salt of the earth bloke."

When Kevin arrived everyone was just standing around pretty much stunned. A lot of the blokes who'd come to start the next shift were at the gate. The police were there, taking statements.

Kevin went first to see his mate Glenn, the crane driver: "He was a good mate of Roscoe's. He refused to go home until he had spoken to the family. He was shattered. So were the blokes in the hold."

Roscoe's two sons Leighton, 25, and Adam, 32, his younger brother Bryan and his wife Glenda waited on the wharves.

Bryan has worked on the waterfront at Westernport since 1974. Their dad was a wharfie. They grew up in Port Melbourne as kids.

"I don't know if I'll ever get over it," he said. "I get a phone call in the early evening and next thing I'm at Appleton Dock waiting for them to bring my brother's body off a ship."

It was a long wait. By the time the police, the coroner and WorkSafe were finished it was well after midnight.

Tommy Donegan, the crane driver and charge foreman for the midnight gang lifted the body out.

"We started shift at 8.30 just after the accident," he said. "I got there the same time as the ambulance and police. Roscoe had already been pronounced dead. I was trying to comfort the other blokes until we got the okay to lift the body out around 1.20am. I took him out. It wasn't very nice. I was pretty close to the man myself. I did it out of respect. He was a workmate and a close family friend - a lovely man, Roscoe."

Tom Donegan has been on the waterfront since he was 12 years of age working at the old dry dock. He got exemption to leave school and get a job when his dad passed away.

"The waterfront is all I know," he said. "It's been my only job - from a dockie to a wharfie - 26 years. I've seen a fair bit."

Four years earlier Tom had to work the container that had struck and killed workmate Jeff Gray at Appleton Dock.

Since then he was up the crane when his girlfriend was struck by a steel load protruding from a truck while she was working on the wharves - she's still off work. Another time he was standing just inches from a workmate who got his hand crushed between a 40-foot container and the ship's accommodation.

"That's the sort of industry it is," said Tom. "You'd half be on suicide watch yourself. With this one it just happened again so quick. We were just getting over losing Jeff. We've still got his photo with his three kids in our lunch room.

"The more it keeps happening, the more it gets to you," he said. "The first time you go 'Oh it's an accident, but the second and third time you start to wonder what your number is. If you're next."

The union response was adamant. All work stopped on all three ships in dock that night. WorkSafe put a prohibition on the ship.

Dubai Ports OH&S international officer Martin Anderson flew to Australia to meet with MUA branch and national officials and all senior management.

Tim Blood, chair of DP World Australia, Duncan Sadler, Australian bulk and general manager, John McKeohn all addressed the meeting.

Deputy National Secretary Jim Tannock flew into Melbourne on the Sunday to lead discussions and visit the Ross family.

"We spent the weekend in meetings and talking to committee members on the job, representatives from safety and shop committees," said Dave Schleibs, deputy branch secretary.

The meeting decided to call for volunteers to return to work on the other ships, Monday. Before start of shift at 7am the branch officials went down to brief the labour and let them know counselling was available.

It was the same for the afternoon shift.

Dave Schleibs also went over to West Swanson Dock container terminal to brief labour on both shifts. On the midnight he went down again.

"We've had all the members who witnessed the fatality up for individual counselling," he said.

Kevin also escorted Roscoe's workmates Darren, Anthony and Tom back to the site. He also took his brother Bryan.

"I went onto the ship and had a look around," said Bryan. "I thought being a wharfie myself and being a crane driver if I got down there I could make sense of it. Everything was so confused on the night. I wanted to know how it happened. Not the why. I needed to have it clear in my head.

"It's a dangerous job," he said. "People take it for granted. They don't really know the dangers involved. As to how I'm coping, I've got to do what I've got to do, and that's wake up everyday and start again."

Two weeks later Darren was still struggling with the loss.

"I'm trying to return to work, but I can't go back to Appleton," he said. "I don't want to ever have to go back there again. I went down twice since it happened, once for counselling, once for administration. It's if someone has just ripped something away from me."

Only six months earlier Darren was working in the sister ship Cape Donnington on the last shift before it sailed to Adelaide where Dean Robinson died.

Dean was working below the ship's crane discharging steel in the hold when he was crushed by the 7-tonne sling load. Again his horrified workmates witnessed the accident, some trying unsuccessfully to provide first aid and keep him alive.

"I keep thinking of those Workcover ads of a little boy waiting for his dad," said Darren.

Tom also went down to the ship on the Monday.

"There were three ships alongside," he said. "We walked past the first two and I was fine. But when we passed the ship Roscoe died on I got a cold eerie feeling."

It was a week before all work resumed on the Cape Conway.

"Now WorkSafe has said you can't take a load out unless there is a cage for the blokes to get into during the lift," said Kevin Bracken. "The company suggested it and we went down and worked through the procedure. Once that was in place the prohibition notice was lifted so the ship could work. But there was no work in the hold where Roscoe died until the day after the funeral."

Meanwhile National Secretary Paddy Crumlin has put the matter of safe stowage and a stevedoring code of practice to the International Transport Worker's Federation dockers' forum (see opposite).

"If they can get that it would be terrific," said Tom. "We deal with ships that are loaded overseas. We don't know what the job's like until we open up the hatch. It's a dangerous industry. I just don't see why we should have to cop it. It's costing blokes their lives. Destroying families. If they're not dead, they're injured that bad they can't get a job. We got to get together with the union and get the company to act."

Jim Tannock MUA Deputy National Secretary led talks with management and represented national office at the funeral:

"Roscoe and I were mates over 40 years," he said. "We both grew up in Port Melbourne and played for the same football team, the Colts. I'd always lived nearby. A lot of his mates were my mates. We knocked around together for a time. He was a good man, a good father, a good unionist and a good wharfie."

The community paper also paid tribute to a community stalwart. He loved sports, especially football and racing - the Swans, Port Melbourne, Port Colts.

"Mr Ross devoted 28 years to both the Noble Park Football Club Juniors, where he was a life member, and to the Noble Park Football Social Club," it reported.

Tributes and death notices flooded the Melbourne metropolitan newspapers - from mates, family, and the union, Sydney Swans Football Club, the Dandenong and District Junior Football League.

At the funeral an estimated 800 workmates, family, union, company representatives and footy mates attended the Springvale Botanical Cemetery.

"Once my brother knew somebody he knew you for life and if you were his mate you were his mate for life," said Bryan.

"At the funeral, there was not a dry eye in the place," said Darren. "Tough men were brought to their knees."

" I haven't been back to work," said Tommy. "I think everybody's pretty rattled about it. I've heard a couple of people left for good. They've got young families and their wives have said that's enough. Sometimes I would like to just walk away myself, but I try to overcome things, overcome the fear. You've got to battle on in life. You just hope it will never happen again, but somewhere it will."

Footnote: The Victorian Branch will hold a fundraiser for the Ross family on March 4 at the branch rooms. All donations gratefully accepted.____ For further information contact David Schleibs on 03 9328 1682.