Rockfall survivor Brant Webb feels continuing bitterness towards management at the Beaconsfield Gold Mine, who he says failed to provide a safe workplace.
Mr Webb and colleague Todd Russell survived 14 days trapped underground in the Tasmanian gold mine after the rockfall on April 25, 2006, which killed fellow miner Larry Knight.
Mr Webb today told an inquest in Launceston into Mr Knight's death: "I'm still bitter - they are supposed to supply a safe workplace."
He said he had flipped a coin with Mr Knight to decide jobs before starting work on building an underground wall on the day of the collapse.
Mr Webb and Mr Russell were saved from being crushed by the rockfall by being inside the cage of a cherrypicker-type machine being operated by Mr Knight.
"We flipped a coin for the tele-handler and Larry got the tele-handler and I got the ute," he told the inquest.
Mr Webb took about 45 minutes to give his evidence and said little as he left the inquest, except repeating that he was bitter about the mine's alleged lack of safety.
The question of whether the mine put production ahead of safety is key to the inquiry.
In his evidence, Mr Webb said it wasn't his or Mr Knight's job to be building the wall in the ill-fated stope, or mine excavation, one kilometre below ground.
Their job was to maintain infrastructure such as air-conditioning and power, and indeed he accepted $10,000 per year less pay to avoid such situations, he said.
Mr Webb said he had misgivings about being in the two-year-old stope, which had been exposed to corrosive air and water and showed signs of seismic activity.
"Air and water are your enemy," he said.
"It looked like any stope that had been open too long.
"It was a dodgy stope."
Mr Webb said there was an urgency to get ore from the stope before it started "self-mining" and that's why he and Mr Knight were pulled from their regular duties.
The mine wanted to "drop the ore before (the stope) fell in", he said.
Mr Webb also said he and Mr Knight would have "chucked a sickie" and not worked that day if they had known that the area had not been blasted in the previous few days to relieve pressure.
And he criticised a lack of safety briefings at the mine, adding that complaints "fell on deaf ears".
He told the inquest that miners were regularly informed about the mine's perilous financial situation under administration.
"They were always crying poverty," he said.
Miners were shown a production graph and told that if yields fell below a red line on the graph then "that's the end of our jobs".
Mine management urged workers to work harder, Mr Webb said.
"We will pay you more money to get more ore because we are under the pump from Macquarie Bank," he said.
At the time of the rockfall, the mine was co-owned and managed by Allstate Explorations, which was run by the Perth-based administrator Michael Ryan.
Allstate was operated largely for the benefit of Macquarie Bank, following a contentious 2002 deal in which it bought $77 million in intra-company debt for only $300,000, the inquest heard.
Mr Webb said Mr Knight had just left him and Mr Russell to get some wire mesh when he felt a huge blast of air that he thought came from a blown tyre on the tele-handler "when it all let go".
"I woke up with Todd yelling," he said.
