Fed: Out of sight but not out of mind: hard-hat heroes of 2006

AAP General News (Australia)
12-15-2006
Fed: Out of sight but not out of mind: hard-hat heroes of 2006

By Doug Conway, Senior Correspondent

SYDNEY, AAP - They became national icons one kilometre underground, unknown, unheard and unseen.

They were out of sight for a fortnight, but never out of mind.

Their fight for life captivated millions.

By winning it, two knockabout Tassie miners, BRANT WEBB and TODD RUSSELL, provided
the most uplifting moment of the year and stamped themselves Australia's biggest winners
of 2006.

When they finally emerged into daylight, the thirty-something hard-hats found themselves
instant folk heroes.

It's wrong to assume their lives suddenly became one flawless, rosy idyll, for they
expect to carry forever the mental scars of their entombment and the loss of their colleague
Larry Knight.

But they did resurface with families to embrace them and a lucrative media deal which
means they now earn a living above ground, one selling boats and the other with a management
company.

Webb and Russell made contingency plans while trapped at Beaconsfield to sever their
own limbs, if necessary, to get out.

Their story carried echoes of Stuart Diver's miraculous survival in the Thredbo landslide
nine years earlier.

It showed what everyone desperately wants to believe in every dark moment - that there
is life at the end of the tunnel.

Of the other big winners of 2006, none united the nation so euphorically as the SOCCEROOS.

Dutchman GUUS HIDDINK'S team notched Australia's first ever goal at the World Cup finals,
through TIM CAHILL, its first ever victory, against Japan, and set the world on its heels
by pushing eventual winner Italy to the brink.

When villain-of-the-piece Fabio Grosso connived a fateful penalty, LUCAS NEILL might
not have felt like the Socceroos' biggest personal winner, but that's how he ended up.

The nation empathised with him as the victim of Grosso's last-minute "dive", he was
acclaimed as Australia's outstanding player of the tournament, he was the number one poster
boy among female fans and he went on to become Socceroo captain.

KEVIN RUDD was the biggest political winner, wresting Labor's federal leadership from
Kim Beazley in a 49-39 caucus ballot.

He brought in JULIA GILLARD in as his deputy and reshaped Labor's front bench to include
former rocker PETER GARRETT as environment spokesman.

BINDI IRWIN won the hearts of the nation, as perhaps only an eight-year-old can, with
her cheerful stoicism after the tragic death of her father, TV's Crocodile Hunter Steve
Irwin, off the Queensland coast.

Another brave primary schooler, Sydney's SOPHIE DELEZIO, gladdened hearts just by turning
up to school again after a second horrific car accident which doctors did not expect her
to survive.

Mountain climber LINCOLN HALL was given up for dead on his descent from the summit
of Mount Everest, but survived to tell astonished rescuers: "I imagine you are surprised
to see me here."

Business tycoons JAMES PACKER and KERRY STOKES positioned themselves for major expansion
through leveraged foreign buyouts which cashed them up with billions of dollars, yet enabled
them to retain control of their media empires.

Stokes's Seven Network came within a whisker of topping Packer's Nine in the TV ratings
war, and combined with Ten to snatch the lucrative AFL rights, literally over Kerry Packer's
dead body, with a combined $780 million bid which trumped the last roll of the dice in
the late mogul's business career.

The biggest job in television went to EDDIE McGUIRE, who swapped life in front of the
camera to go behind the scenes and run the Nine network, though still with a very high
public profile.

Brisbane immunologist IAN FRAZER was named Australian of the Year for developing a
vaccine to prevent cervical cancer, and seemed even more delighted when federal funding
approval paved the way for its use in a national immunisation program from next year.

LABOR retained power in all states and territories, with PETER BEATTIE winning his
fourth straight election in Queensland, STEVE BRACKS making it a hat-trick in Victoria,
MIKE RANN returning to power in South Australia and PAUL LENNON taking Tasmania's election.

In Western Australia, ALAN CARPENTER took the reins from Geoff Gallop, who quit politics
because of depression.

GLENN STEVENS was appointed governor of the Reserve Bank, replacing the outgoing Ian
Macfarlane and taking control of the nation's interest rates.

Author and journalist GERALDINE BROOKS won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for her novel, March.

Australian-born PRINCESS MARY of Denmark christened her first child Christian and is
now looking forward to the birth of her second.

Australian athletes led by world record-breaking swimmer LEISEL JONES had no difficulty
crowning themselves COMMONWEALTH GAMES champions again in Melbourne.

The retirement of Ian Thorpe, Australia's greatest Olympian, paved the way for GRANT
HACKETT to usurp him at Beijing in 2008.

And with vengance burning in every fibre, a determined RICKY PONTING led from the front
as Australia sought to recapture cricket's prized urn in the most eagerly anticipated
Ashes series ever.

THE LOSERS:

KIM BEAZLEY lost his third chance at the biggest prize in politics, The Lodge, when
his caucus colleagues dumped him as Labor leader in favour of Kevin Rudd, though he won
accolades for his dignified exit on the same day his brother David died suddenly in Perth.

Beazley's deputy JENNY MACKLIN went, too, deciding not to re-contest when it was evident
the numbers weren't there.

Prime Minister Howard remained teflon-coated over the degenerating war in Iraq, even
though it cost his key ally GEORGE BUSH control of both houses of congress and DONALD
RUMSFELD his job as US defence secretary.

PETER COSTELLO had to pull his horns in yet again after Mr Howard disputed his deputy's
claims of a leadership handover pact and set his sights resolutely on a fifth successive
election win in 2007.

The biggest problem for state Liberals was losing leaders and elections, notably ROB
DOYLE and TED BAILLIEU in Victoria and LAWRENCE SPRINGBORG in Queensland.

The biggest problem for Australia's state Labor governments was a succession of unrelated
mistakes and scandals which among other things cost NSW ministers CARL SCULLY and MILTON
ORKOPOULOS their jobs, forced disgraced former WA premier BRIAN BURKE to quit the party
and led to conspiracy charges against ex-Tasmanian deputy premier BRYAN GREEN.

The Cole inquiry into the large-scale bribery of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq left
open the possibility of criminal charges against 11 former AWB executives, including chairman
TREVOR FLUGGE, and former BHP executive NORMAN DAVIDSON KELLY.

The DEFENCE DEPARTMENT's blushes could not be spared in the bungled repatriation of
the body of private JAKE KOVCO, Australia's first military death in Iraq.

Terrorism suspect DAVID HICKS remained behind bars for a fifth year without trial at
Guantanamo Bay.

FARMERS faced their fifth year of a crippling drought, with depression and suicide
emerging as a serious problem in the bush, while in the cities HOME LENDERS with traditionally
bigger mortgages had to cope with their fourth successive rate rise in two years.

TV presenter NAOMI ROBSON quit her job at the end of a year in which she was pilloried
over Seven's farcical mission to rescue a six-year-old jungle boy called Wah-Wah, supposedly
from a Papuan cannibal tribe's coooking pot.

A rare circulatory illness forced Yellow Wiggle GREG PAGE to step down from Australian
entertainment's highest earning outfit.

Australia's chief Muslim cleric, SHEIK TAJ ALDIN ALHILALI, sparked a storm of outrage
by suggesting immodestly dressed women provoked rape and comparing them to meat left out
near a cat.

Former Test cricketer DEAN JONES was sacked by his South African television employer
after referring to a Muslim player as a terrorist.

MEL GIBSON'S mouth also got him into trouble, the Oscar-winning actor eventually apologising
for anti-Semitic comments made to US police who arrested him for drink driving.

Golfer GREG NORMAN split from his wife Laura, while country singer KEITH URBAN married
Australia's hottest actor Nicole Kidman only to check into a rehabilitation clinic soon
after.

Wallaby star WENDELL SAILOR was banned from rugby union for two years for cocaine use.

TV fisherman REX HUNT called himself a sleaze and begged forgiveness from his wife
of 34 years after admitting paying three women for sex over more than a decade.

Convicted killer BRUCE BURRELL was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of
Sydney mother Kerry Whelan nine years ago.

BRAD COOPER got up to eight years for fraud and bribery relating to collapsed insurer HIH.

Former Labor leader MARK LATHAM was placed on two-year good behaviour bond for malicious
damage to a news photographer's $6,700 camera.

Six members of the BALI NINE drug smuggling ring ended the year facing execution.

AAP dc/sp

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