Cave Creek: The Full Story of a National Tragedy

It was such a beautiful day, when it’s sunny on the coast it’s just like…it’s awesome. You could see all the way up the coast, and the waves all coming in.

– Cave Creek survivor Leanne Wheeler describes the morning of the tragedy

It looked good. You could look at it on the surface and it looked reasonable to the eye, standing out in the bush. But underneath, the connections...are frightening.

– Engineer Philip Cook describes his findings, after reconstructing an exact replica of the Cave Creek platform

Head office, certainly some people up there possibly made mistakes; some people locally made mistakes. But most of all, it was an expression of making less go further. Most of all, it was an expression of what has happened politically in this country since 1988 — of expecting people to do more with less. And sometimes you come a gutser on that.

– Andrew McCarthy, father of Cave Creek victim Cathy McCarthy, on the causes of the Cave Creek tragedy

I just couldn’t believe it. There was…there was nothing there. Everything had gone. There was…the piles and the stairs, and nothing — no sign of anybody.

– Department of Conservation worker Shirley Slatter recalls the immediate aftermath of the platform collapse

You think 'no, it’s a bad dream. It’ll all go away.' You know, somebody’s tricking you…he’s going to walk back in the door. No. Not to be.

– Linda O’Dea on the grief of losing a child

Well there is no such thing as 'systemic failure'. This is sort of a word game that Judge Noble came up with. You know, systems only fail because people err. Or in some instances there might be an act of God, it might be a volcanic eruption or an earthquake. None of that at all; this was completely avoidable…

– Scandal at Cave Creek author Graeme Hunt dismisses Judge Graeme Noble’s description of 'systemic failure' in his Commission of Inquiry report

I conclude that it would be quite inappropriate to point the finger of blame at any one of the individuals. It is uniquely an institutional failure . . . The striking feature of the enquiry is that not one of the individuals concerned was ever aware of the appropriate standards to be met, simply because no such set of standards was in place.

– Excerpt from Judge Graeme Noble’s findings at the Commission of Inquiry into Cave Creek

I find the actions of the Crown Law Office inexplicable. In terms of the evidence on my file and certainly revealed to the Commission of Inquiry, there should have been prosecutions of quite a wide range of people, and that would have included people at the very highest levels within the department.

– Lawyer Grant Cameron on the lack of individual prosecutions after the Cave Creek tragedy