‘He Went To Work & Never Came Home..'

Nine years after a deadly explosion killed her son, Joanne returned to see justice done

- Emma Levett

The devastation in the room was palpable. “People were shouting and screaming, crying. It was the worst day of my life,” Joanne Ufer remembers.

Five days earlier, the Queensland mum had received a terrifying phone call. Her son Joshua, 25, was one of 29 miners trapped underground at the Pike River Mine on New Zealand’s South Island after a horrific explosion.

Racing from her home in Australia to NZ with her daughter Kymberley, now 26, the pair were desperate for any snippet of news that might show Joshua was safe.

“He’d worked in the mines in Australia for about four years and only recently moved to New Zealand,” Joanne, 51, tells Woman’s Day in an exclusive interview. “He’d had a tough run, but life was starting to go well. He had a lovely new partner, Rachelle, and they’d just told me they were expecting a baby.”

SECOND BLAST

But any flicker of hope was soon cruelly snuffed out. After a second explosion, family members were told there was no way any of the miners had survived. Joanne’s son had just gone to work… but he was never coming home.

“I remember feeling like I had left my body somehow, like I wasn’t me anymore,” Joanne sighs. “Before that I had still hoped Josh would be OK, but as the reality hit that my boy was gone... well, it’s something I’ll never forget.”