QUARRY MEN KILLED

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 110, 11 May 1943, Page 2

QUARRY MEN KILLED

1 CLIFF FACE COLLAPSES (0.C.) SYDNEY, May 7. Two men were killed near Marulan about 100 miles from Sydney on the Hume Highway to Melbourne, on Tuesday, when 1000 tons of rock crashed 60ft down the side of a quarry on to them. The men, George Frederick Sheather, 31, married, and Leslie Chown were working in the quarry of the Southern Portland Cement Company, drilling holes for explosives at the base of an almost vertical limestone wall. They had drilled one hole, and had just shifted the drilling machine to begin another, when the whole top of the cliff collapsed. Many of the boulders of blue, jagged limestone weighed more than a ton.

Thomas Rutter, of Marulan South, who was working about 50yds away, said: "I saw the rock quiver as if it were alive before it began to fall. I shouted to Chown and Sheather, but the roar of their drills drowned my voice. They worked on, as if nothing was wrong, until the great mass of stone poured over them." Workmates knew that Chown and Sheather must have been killed instantly, but they began work at once to recover the mutilated bodies. An electric shovel scooped rock away a ton at a time. Sheather's body was uncovered a little more than an hour after the accident. Chown's body was only a few yards away towards the cliff face, but it took the machine another two hours to reach him.