The OPML editor sure is good for live-blogging! My typepad blog seemed cumbersome in comparison. Though I guess blogging something off the TV and radio like that hardly counts as live-blogging. It was good to try out though. I had to keep changing rooms :-)

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Blogging the Beaconsfield Mine rescue 

6.17am: They are on their way :-)

6.12 Miners forming a guard of honour. Ambulances driving out slowly. Police car first, then the two ambulances, then a van for more family.

Todd has chucked his boots off and is joking. Kicking back in the ambulance. People milling around. Obviously talkative and humorous. Much clapping and whistles.

6.06: Todd Rusell hugging his boy and now going to the ambulance

6.04am : Brant Webb getting into the ambulances with their families

much hugging, back slapping, hand shaking. Very blokey :-)

Todd Russel hugging Bill Shorten

5.58 am : they are out! tags taken! families being embraced!

There will be a guard of honour as the miners leave the mine.

5.54am: The wives have been seen heading down into the mine to meet their guys.

The media has staked out everything fromBeaconsfield to Luanceston where the hospital is. A channel 7 reporter is saying that the 40min drive by ambulance to Launceston will be the longest drive in their lives. Somehow I think thats not true and she is projecting some of herself into that comment!

5.49: announcement that the miners will be coming out after 6am EST. Or in 15 minutes...

Not surprisingly, there is a lot of symbolism involved in this situation. Much emphasis on the miners wanting to walk out if possible, instead of being taken on stretchers, and wanting to move their work tags from the green to the red side of the board that indicates whether you are 'on shift' and down the mine, or 'completed your shift' and safely up from the mine. Also much speculation about whether the miners will push hard to attend the funeral today of their fellow miner who died.

In a slightly earlier interview, Bill Shorten kept emphasising that it was the families that should remain the focus. He's right.

5.27am: Bill Shorten, the Australian Workers Union leader who has been looking after the families and handling much of the media attention has announced the men will be coming out in about an hour. They have been medically assessed as being pretty fit: #3 on a scale where the average is #4. They are cleaning up and reuniting with their families at a station below ground. People are allowing themselves to cheer!

5.22 am: They say the streets of Beaconsfiled are filling with people waiting for the miners to emerge. The church bell has been ringing. It's wet and windy, and still dark. The media is interviewing anyone they can.

It's 5.10 am here in Canberra. I woke up and turned on the radio at 5, wondering how the rescue of the trapped miners in Tasmania was going, and was delighted to hear they have been freed from the 1.2 metre cage and cavity that they have been in for the last 14 days, a kilometre deep in the earth.

They are not above ground yet, but apparently it's immiment. It's just so hard to imagine being in those circumstances. Now they will have the media to contend with.

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