TWO Australian miners have described how they considered amputating their legs as they desperately clawed away at the rubble that buried them to their armpits when a mineshaft collapsed last month.

In their first interview since their two-week ordeal ended, Todd Russell and Brant Webb told Australian television how the cave-in left them trapped in a tiny cage under tonnes of rock in the humid bowels of a Tasmanian gold mine. “Both my legs were pinned,” Mr Russell, 34, said. “I kept saying to Brant ‘I got to get out, I gotta get this rock off me. I was getting towards my last breaths. The pressure was getting that bad around the chest.”

The pair said that they even discussed cutting off their legs to free themselves from the rocks. “Yeah, we were prepared to take our legs off if we had to,” Mr Webb said.

He said that he was falling in and out of consciousness as he dug with his bare hands, but as he removed one pile of rocks more would fall into the cage. Eventually he managed to free himself and began digging out Mr Russell.

The miners were trapped for two weeks by a cave-in at the Beaconsfield Gold Mine in Tasmania after a small earthquake triggered a collapse. A third miner, Larry Knight, was killed in the cave-in. They survived on drinking the mineral-laced water that saturated the rocks around them until rescuers managed to dig a small tunnel to feed them water and food.

Mr Webb spoke of his desperation as he heard the rescuers boring towards them: “I just thought I was a caged rat.” Mr Russell said that he used humour to calm Mr Webb in the confines of the cramped cage. “I said: ‘Look mate, if you don’t settle down, I’m going to have to give you a kiss’.”

Once freed from the rubble, the miners said, cave-ins continued for days. As they awaited rescue, the two men said that they wrote letters to their wives and children. Mr Webb wrote messages on his cigarette packet. Mr Russell wrote on his overalls. “I’d written letters on my arms to my wife and family. Because of the sweat and the wet that we were getting from the water, it had washed off,” Mr Russell said.

The pair said that they kept their spirits up by cracking jokes and singing the only song they both knew: The Gambler by Kenny Rogers. Rescuers who blasted their way into the collapsed shaft discovered that the pair were alive only when they heard them singing five days after the cave-in.

They were finally rescued on May 9 by miners who tunnelled through solid rock to reach them. The men said that they both had spinal and knee damage but managed to walk out of the mine without assistance, against medical advice, in what they described as The Great Escape.

“We made a pact,” said Mr Russell. “It’s just Brant and I, and that pact is going to stay as strong as it is now for the rest of our lives.” The two miners sold their story to Australia’s Nine television network for a A$2.6 million. (£1 million).

THE GAMBLER

He said, son, I’ve made a life out of readin’ people’s faces,

And knowin’ what their cards were by the way they held their eyes.

So if you don’t mind my sayin’, I can see you’re out of aces

For a taste of your whiskey I’ll give you some advice.

Now ev’ry gambler knows that the secret to survivin’

Is knowin’ what to throw away and knowing what to keep.

‘Cause ev’ry hand’s a winner and ev’ry hand’s a loser,

And the best that you can hope for is to die in your sleep.

Two extracts from The Gambler by Kenny Rogers

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