Found: Mystery Author Of Famous Appin Mine Tragedy Poem

Illawarra Mercury

Saturday July 31, 2004

By PAUL McINERNEY

TWO days after an underground explosion killed 14 Appin coalminers in 1979, Ray Hallam sat down at his kitchen table and wrote a poem.

To this day he still has difficulty explaining why he suddenly put pen to paper.

But as a coalminer himself, he understood the anguish of the widows and children left behind and the immense sense of loss felt by the tightly knit mining community in the Illawarra.

He gave the hand-written verse to a mine union official, asking he remain anonymous for fear of doing anything that might detract from the grief of the moment.

Two months later the Miners' Federation newspaper, Common Cause, published the poem, copies of which had earlier been formally handed to the widows of the 14 dead miners by the union.

But the identity of the poem's author remained a secret until the Mercury re-published the verse last weekend as part of a special feature to mark the 25th anniversary of the disaster.

"My children saw it in the Mercury first and after thinking about it a quarter of a century later, I thought I should own up to being the author," Mr Hallam said at his Kanahooka home this week.

"I didn't know my poem had been given to the widows and that makes me very proud and I hope in some small way it helped them through their grief."

Aside from a short poem he had written for his wife Joyce during their courtship in England more than 50 years ago, Mr Hallam had written no verse until the mine disaster.

Since then other events have moved him to pen a number of poems, including the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on New York, and the Bali bombings, which claimed 202 lives, 88 of them Australian.

With limited educational opportunities, Mr Hallam was still a teenager when he went underground at the Newstead Colliery in Nottinghamshire. He worked there for 21 years before he and Joyce emigrated to Australia in 1969. Mr Hallam retired in 1990, after almost 20 years at South Bulli Colliery.

"I don't have any obsession with big tragedies but something just clicks with me and I have to sit down and express my feelings," he said.

Joyce Hallam is her husband's biggest fan.

"I love his poems, he just seems to have a way with words," she said.

Bali

Bali was a beautiful place

where poeple spent their holiday

They came from different countries

to dance and swim and play

but terror ended their freedom

whilst they enjoyed a beer

a bomb blew up their waterhole

And there was panic in the air

people lay there dying

there were bodies all around

some you could not recognise

some could not be found

friends tried to find their love ones

that were parted in the blast.

But hope then turned tears

when their body was found at last.

Lets not forget the helpers

for no matter how they tried

their effortrs were outstanding

But alas' some patients died.

© 2004 Illawarra Mercury

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