Richard Fidler

But for a man who's starving to death, there's not a vast amount of nutritional value in a scone.

No.

It wasn't like they didn't give any space bars or energy drinks or anything like that, right?

There was a Marine Court of Inquiry eventually into the sinking.

The Tasmanian Transport Commission that owned the ship was found to have performed with gross incompetence and callousness

The ship was found to have not been seaworthy.

The emergency provisions were inadequate and the extreme.

The captain was incompetent and unable to properly operate a radio.

The search was ridiculous.

There was vast amounts of arse covering afterwards from the authorities.

And then the barristers, some of the barristers in this case, as they questioned you and others, tried to hang responsibility on the dead men.

Was there any good that could come out of such a debacle?

You became very active in the union movement, the Maritime Union, after that, and became a senior official after a while.

Did anything come out of that inquiry and through your activities?

How much safer is it now for seafarers?

How much safer did it become for seafarers after this terrible debacle?

Does so much of this come out of this ancient, ancient tradition as what happens at sea stays at sea?

You're off the mainland, you're in this kind of wild west land now where there isn't really any kind of government or any kind of authority or any supervisory authority.

Is that part of the very ancient culture of seagoing that goes back to the year Dot, I wonder?

I know you're still a haunted without the thought of those three men that died.