After 17 Years, A Victim's Boat Comes In
The Age
Saturday July 15, 1995
NEXT month, 17 years after his fishing boat overturned off Lakes Entrance taking the lives of three sailors, the vessel's owner will have his day in court.
Captain Geoffrey Newman, who counts himself as a fourth victim of the tragedy, is fighting to clear his name of suspicion, to win back his boat, and to recover job opportunities he says were lost in the aftermath of the tragedy on 18 March 1978.
That day, in foul weather and three-metre seas, the 37-tonne `Shark' foundered and capsized. Three sailors drowned - the skipper, Gavin Farley, and crewmen Ron Bilowski and Bob Alexander.
It is not known when they died, but evidence emerged to suggest that at least one of them survived for a long time - perhaps days - in an air pocket inside the upturned hull. The bodies eventually floated ashore, one more than 80 kilometres away. The `Shark' remains stuck on the sandbar where it came to grief.
When the trawler approached the entrance to the port, Farley had labored to align it with the navigational lines. His task was difficult, but the conditions were no worse than he had handled before. A marine board of inquiry was told that Captain Newman had radioed Farley to suggest he hold off until later in the day when the weather might have improved.
According to a local fisherman, Mr Peter Friend, who was watching through binoculars from his hilltop home, the `Shark' approached the sandbar that had formed outside the port and tried to skirt the breakers forming on the bar.
``He didn't quite have the distance that I would have liked," Mr Friend told the inquiry. A big roller picked up the `Shark' like a cork, and the vessel capsized, crashing keel-up on the bar.
Twelve days later , the ports and harbors division of the then Public Works Department legally seized the marooned boat, and later sent Captain Newman a bill for $167,977.47, which it said was the cost of salvage and rescue efforts.
The crew's families have still received no compensation, insurance money for the `Shark' has not been collected, the State Government has yet to be paid for salvage operations.
Last month the Supreme Court ruled against an attempt by the Victorian Government and others associated with the ill-fated rescue and salvage bids to have Captain Newman's legal action against them struck off because of the delay. An appeal against this decision will be heard on 7 August.
The writ was issued in the Supreme Court in 1984 and has yet to be tested in any court.
Captain Newman and his wife, Andrea, are suing for a minimum of $30 million damages, claiming that they have been denied their boat, lucrative business opportunities and any significant employment since the Shark capsized. He is unemployed and financing his case with legal aid.
In dismissing the application to let the matter lapse, Master Evans said on 13 June that it would be unfair for public money to be spent on behalf of the plaintiffs, ``and then by action by the Government those monies are thrown away".
This long-running legal battle is expected to culminate in a 20-week trial.
Captain Newman says the Government ship April Hamer, two weeks before the tragedy, dredged the shipping channel incorrectly, halving an already narrow entrance, and that the authorities failed to warn the Shark of the operation before it hit the bar.
The marine court of inquiry, headed by Justice Southwell, rejected this a finding Captain Newman claims was flawed.
Captain Newman claims that the Shark could have been salvaged, and at least some of the crew saved the following morning, if not for local port authorities and police preventing him from gaining access to the stricken boat.
He further claims that incompetence made the initial tragedy possible, and a combination of bureaucratic ineptitude and cover-up has protected those responsible and denied him natural justice.
© 1995 The Age
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