Strongman - The Tragedy

There was a Catholic priest and he wanted to speak to me alone. He asked me if I'd said my prayers, and I said no, I hadn't, so we said some prayers and then he told me, and I called him a lying bastard. That's something I'll never forget. Childhood was over, really.

– The son of a miner killed at Strongman remembers how he heard the news

If you get emotional in there, you're dead. It wasn't a place for emotion.

– Mick O'Donnell talks about his mindset going into the mine to retrieve victims

When I heard about Pike I was just stunned. Here I'd been working on Strongman for a couple of years, never in a million years did I envisage that another disaster would happen. It really knocked me for six. I spoke to some of the people who I'd interviewed, we talked about it, and decided it was the right thing to carry on, that it was even more important that it got made.

– Writer and co-director Paula McTaggart on hearing about the Pike River Mine explosion, The Sunday Star-Times, 13 May 2012

We used to draw for our places, and you'd work in that place for the next three months. Those guys that drew those places...you could say it was the luck of the draw.

– Former Strongman miner Herb Hart, in the excerpt

...everything was just jovial. There was nothing to warn you that something was going to happen. Just a normal day.

– Former Strongman miner Peter Crawford, in the excerpt

There was a sense, [Paula McTaggart says, that if the documentary wasn't made now, it never would be, as more and more of those involved have died. Around eight people she had spoken to, including two who feature in the programme, had died since she began doing interviews in 2008.

– Writer Tony Wall in an interview with director Paula McTaggart, The Sunday Star-Times, 13 May 2012