This is part of an interview Series for the National Film and Sound Archive Aural History Programme by John Fife.
My name is John Fife (JF) and I have with me Morrie Pilens (MP).
MP: Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Have we spoken about the helicopter crash yet?
JF: No, we want to get to there soon.
MP: Well maybe now, because it’s part of exclusivity.
JF: Tell us the story from the beginning.
MP: From the beginning. There’s a nice little job for tomorrow, and you’re going to Sale – it’s a PR job on a rig, and then you’re going to have lunch inside. It’s a nice little job. Your journalist’s going to be… forgotten his name.
JF: So this is about ’68?
MP: Yes, early 70’s maybe. Something like that. Anyway I said ‘Yes, okay.’ So the next morning I’m driving up to the studios to pick up my journalist. I’m waiting and waiting and waiting. It’s 11 o’clock and he’s not there. I say ‘Oh, I’d better hurry up’ so I ring him. And he’s in bed. He lives up in the hills somewhere.
He says ‘Oh, no no don’t worry. You can go by yourself. That’s alright, you’re covered by yourself.’ So I think okay. I hop in the car and drive like mad out to Essendon airport, and the DC3 is just about taking off when I arrive there. I’m waving my hands saying ‘Wait for me!’ They did! Stopped, opened the door, got me in. Oh, PR job mate. And off we go to Sale.
From Sale we all hop into a helicopter. We’re divided into two groups. One group’s going to go first and finish, then the next group’s going to go. So we all hop in the helicopter and off we go to the rig. Barracouta I think.
JF: How many of you would have got onto one chopper?
MP: One two three four. Four with myself. So off we go to Sale (means the rig) and film cooks doing a little bit of cooking, and blokes relaxing in their relaxing rooms, and others working, putting pipes together and going up and down. And there is a PR guy conducting us.
JF: So you’re on the rig now?
MP: Yes we’re on the rig. And he’s sort of talking and couple of shots of this. I shot 200 feet of film and *said ‘Okay, fine, I’ve got enough.’ The other cameramen were Wolfgang Beerhardt? Sydney *cameraman – a German cameraman that got himself a job with ABC – Keith Rankin who was chief cameraman for channel 9 and whose background is ambulance, and Geoff Bell who’s freelancing for 7 at this stage.
So I said to the PR guy, “Look, when we were landing we shot through the Perspex windows and they’re scratched, and it looks shithouse. Can I have one flight there and back across the rig, with the door off?’
‘Ohhh, we’re late for lunch…’
I said ‘Look, the story is as far as I’m concerned, this lonely little bloody thing in the middle of nowhere, with a clear picture.’
‘Okay’ ‘Who else wants to go?’
So the three newscameramen went, and Lambert was the Age photographer and there was another couple of seats left, and he said ‘Ah, no no no I’m right. We’ll wait.’
So off we go out again, do a circle, film it, lovely. Middle of nowhere this tiny little bloody platform.
‘Got enough?’
‘Yeah, we’ve got enough.’
So we’re just going back and as we’re going back I said ‘Oh wait a minute, I’ve got another roll of film in my bell.’ So I pull another roll of film out and just run it through a little bit.
And as we’re coming in to land, I’m approaching the rig and you can see – this is a 10 mil wide lens – and I’m just out there holding the camera with a 10 mil lens. And all those guys standing down there waiting for us to get there so they can hop in and be gone to have lunch.
JF: They’re just standing on the rig?
MP: They’re just standing on the top of the rig. On the platform. As we come down, I take a nice little shot. Next thing, WHOOMPH. And the helicopter starts jumping up and down.
JF: What’s happened?
MP: As it’s jumping up and down, it’s twisted into a sideway and it’s going towards the edge of the platform. So I thought ‘Fine, the helicopter’s going to fall in the bloody drink.’
In the meantime, I had the camera going and as soon as I took the trigger off for the Bell, next time I pressed the trigger it wouldn’t work. Because the shake twisted the lens, and the lens on the 10 mil is a very very tiny pinpoint at the back. So I just straightened that and filmed it.
The helicopter just keeps going whoomph, whoomph, whoomph and falling. I said ‘okay, fine. As it goes over the edge I shall depart company, stay on the platform, and the helicpoter’s going to go down.’
JF: So you’re going to jump out?
MP: I’m going to jump out. Because there’s no door on it, I’m right at the edge you see. The other three guys were sitting next to me, they were going to go down with the helicopter. As I’m trying to get out, the pilot says ‘Don’t move, don’t move, you’re alright. Don’t move because the blades still going.’
What I didn’t realise was that as I was climbing into the helicopter I put my gadget bag behind the chair, and having previous experience having dropped things out of helicopters, put my foot in the leather of the gadget bag, so that if I was going to jump I would have been still attached to the helicopter by the leather strap. Anyway. We waited til the helicopter finished jumping – didn’t go that far.
What had happened was, as the helicopter came to land, tail rotor washes broke or something like that. By losing the tail rotor, which sort of fell sideways – Alan Lambert’s got a picture of me sitting there, filming with this helicopter tail rotor half twisted – we hit the deck.
As we hit the deck the helicopter was twisting, and in a twisting way, punctured the bag. So instead of being straight all of a sudden it was on the edge. And as it was on the edge the blade hit the platform, separated the steel leading edge from the plastic blade, and the steel leading edge was going round like a whip (makes whip noises). That’s what did the damage.
Cut the PR guy – four cuts through his stomach. One guy lost his head, one guy lost his arm, there was another guy cut in half and dropped into the drink, swimming down there with all the guts spilled out.
So I came out, all of a sudden realising that my camera is not right. So I got the lens back and started filming what was happening on the platform. Next thing we knew that um, a cook came up to look for ‘choice joint’ as we say – the cook is the first aid guy. So he comes up and starts helping somebody and helping somebody else.
JF: So you’ve got people lying on the rig
MP: I’ve got people scattered all over the place, with guts cut to pieces. I’ve got pictures of a dead body floating in the drink, I’ve got blokes with arms cut off. All this gruesome footage in black and white.
JF: How do you manage in your mind, to be shooting that… how do you cope with that?
MP: You don’t. You don’t cope. You just shoot, doesn’t matter to you. If it smells you in trouble. If it doesn’t smell it doesn’t exist. Once the camera comes up, you’re not there. You’re only recording. There’s no feeling of disaster. The only feeling is ‘Can I get that, did I get that?’ Once you sit down, put the camera down, then you start thinking ‘Ohhhhhhhh shit.’ Put up the camera and it’s a defence. Doesn’t happen to you.
So anyway, filmed all that. There’s Alan Lambert lying down there saying ‘Hey Morrie, I’ve got the wrong lens on.’ I said ‘Don’t worry Alan, I’ll cover for you’ and I got this black Leica that I used to cover in my pocket. So I shot about 3 rolls of 35 mm.
JF: So you would take stills
MP: And movies, yeah. Just stills for myself
JF: With little offcuts of 16mm film.
MP: Yeah, yeah. Cheaper than 35.
JF: Yeah!
MP: I was carrying 35mm all the time but this was cheaper for myself. The 35mm I used to give it to the Age, you get 5 pounds for it. The highest paid was the bloody oil rig when they got 3 editions of my photographs for their front page. I got $100. Big deal, you know.
MP: Yep. And the doctor arrived and we photographed that, and I thought wait a minute. I’ve got the film now how the bloody hell am I going to get rid of it? I know! So I went up to the doctor. Before I did, the film I got of landing and going around the corner, put it in my back pocket. One hundred feet of film. The rest of it that I shot, I package up to send back to channel 10. Got to be careful you know, you never know what’s going to happen. Take chances, yeah.
So I’m talking to the doctor, and he’s going back with the first lot in a helicopter which lands on a barge down below. I said ‘Look doctor, you’ve got a job, I’ve got a job. I give blood and what have you. Could you do me a favour. Could you give this to the girl at the airport and ask her to ring channel 10 to hire a plane to bring it to Melbourne?’ He said ‘oh yeah, I can do that.’
JF: Which roll is this?
MP: This is the second roll. This is aftermath. The roll with all the first ones where we come around the corner, that’s in my pocket. But a repeat of that is in the packet that goes to Melbourne. Which means that – this is midday – they’d have it for the 6 o’clock news no problem.
JF: Why did you want to split the films?
MP: Because I want to make sure that it’s not going to be stolen, not going to disappear. It’s got to be in my pocket in case anybody wants evidence of it. If that film disappears – I’m not SURE that he’s going to give it to her. I’m not SURE that she’s going to give it to somebody. At least what I’ve got in the pocket, they get tomorrow.
So I get the doctor and he takes the film and off he goes. Next to me is the channel 9 reporter, who was on the platform but before the helicopter landed he went down, and was on the stairs with his head just above the platform. So he didn’t get hurt. That’s John Hart.
So John Hart’s next to me and he says ‘We couldn’t send our film back.’ So he gets Lloyd Coulson’s film – in the meantime Lloyd Coulson hasn’t shot a single foot of what was going on, because he was more interested to console the people. And talk to them and comfort them. And he’s just holding a camera and walking around and talking Alan Lambert. And Alan Lambert gives him his big camera and says ‘Look, I had the wrong lens in but I got a shot of it coming down and I had the wrong lens.’
And I said ‘look mate, I told you I’d cover it for you. I’ve got two rolls of 35 mm packets going to the Age.’
JF: Is Lambert hurt?
MP: Oh yeah, Lambert’s got his leg chopped off. And he’s just lying down there.
Anyway, I sent the stills to the Age and the movies to channel 10. So he leaves it to the airport receptionist. The receptionist rings channel 10. Janet Pope’s on the phone. Do you remember Janet Pope or had she gone by then?
JF: No, she’d gone by then.
MP: Janet says “Ha, he doesn’t want to come back does he? Well, if he’s too lazy to come back when he should come back he can bring his own film back.’ And Poop, she’s gone.
JF: She’s in the Melbourne office?
MP: Melbourne office in the front room answering the telephone. She’s supposed to be news editor secretary. And she just knocked back a world shattering bloody story! Anyway, another couple of hours later when they figured out that there was something going on, and Morrie’s been trying to send film back – oh yeah, that’s right. She mentioned it to Ian MacFarlane when he came back from lunch, and by that time they knew something was going on but they didn’t know what it was.
JF: You’re still stuck on the rig?
MP: I’m still on the rig yeah. I can’t get off. So they ring up Sale, get the receptionist. ‘Oh yes, get it to the plane, bring it down here straight away, we’ll pay for it.’ And the girl was just about to give it to the pilot, and the pilot’s in the bloody little plane trying to take off, and up comes screaming a motor car saying ‘Hold it, you can’t do that! We want that film!’ Esso people!
In the meantime, the ABC people on the rig got onto the assistant PR – (whinging tone) ‘Yeah, but Morrie’s got his film off here – why can’t I send MINE off? Why can’t I do this?’
Of course they knew that I’d got the film out, so they stopped the bloody plane, take the film off. .. The receptionist rings back channel 10 and says ‘Oh, the gas people got it. You know.’ Because they own the bloody place. Whatever they say goes because they hire and fire everybody.
JF: They own the airport?
MP: Yeah. Anyway. They had quite a bloody trouble getting the film. So finally they legally threaten them and what have you, and they got the film. Wait a minute, that’s wrong. ABC guy was the one that cried about his film – that’s another incident in the story.
JF: The ABC guy is still on the rig?
MP: We’re all on the rig. Except Bill Hart who was the ABC cameraman, took one look at it and spewed his guts out. He went in the corner and collapsed there. He was one of the casualties. And his assistant came up to me and said ‘Hey Morrie, how do I operate this?’ He’s got an Ariflex.
I said ‘No problem mate.’ I put it on 10 mil lens for him, put it on the right aperture, and said ‘All you’ve got to do is hold it steady and press this trigger.’
I can’t remember his name but he was a sound guy and everybody at ABC was looking down on him – he was somebody that they kick around a bit, you know. So he shot a hundred feet of film, wrapped it up and that was give to the journalist who complained he’d missed out on it, and Geoff Bell comes up to me afterwards and says ‘Morrie, I only took 100 feet of film. I haven’t got any film.’
This was of coming out in the helicopter after the crash. I said ‘Help yourself’ So he helped himself to my bloody film. He filmed it, ABC filmed it.
JF: What do you mean, helped himself to your film?
MP: He said he hasn’t got any film and I said ‘Help yourself, my film’s yours.’ So I gave him footage to use because I had a whole bagful of film and he’s arrived with only a hundred feet of film.
JF: Right
MP: All he had was what he was doing on the rig …
So Geoff got film for channel 7, this sound assistant got film for ABC, I got film for 10, 9 didn’t get any bloody film because Lloyd Coulson was an ambulance officer. He couldn’t bear to see this, he’d rather talk to people and be nice to them. It’s just the way it goes.
JF: Right, so Lloyd’s instinct was to care for the people.
MP: yeah.
JF: Your instinct is…
MP: Was recording. If I’m gone, still there. Recorded. Anyway. So we were sitting and waiting. We can’t get off the rig, we can’t talk to anybody, we can’t ring anybody. Just sitting – I couldn’t give a damn, my film would be on air in an hour or so, you know.
By this time it’s starting to get dark. Crash boat arrived to take us all back to Lakes Entrance. And we’re all in the cabin of the crash boat, and somebody locks the door. And I said to Geoff Bell ‘Hey hey – what are they locking the door for?’
And he says ‘Hey wait a minute – I don’t think they want to let us out.’
So I said ‘okay’, and we just have a little look around. And behind the chimney is emergency steps going up with a little trap door. So Geoff and I got up there and out the trap door, and we’re standing behind the chimney, waiting for the boat. So we’re not locked up with the rest of the plebs that were on the rig – they’re all locked up.
As we come to Lakes Entrance jetty, there’s people standing there waiting already for us. So I jumped and Geoff jumped after me. And I’m running like buggery because I know where the telephone is. And they say ‘Hold him, hold him, bring him back, don’t let him go, hold him, hold him.’
And I’m just going hell for bloody leather! I got to the booth, opened up the booth, get the exchange – there’s a girl there. I said ‘What’s your name?’ Then I said ‘Look, now that I know who you are I’d like to ask a question. The question is, can you be trusted not to interrupt this telephone conversation that I’m going to have with my office? It doesn’t matter what happens, who happens, I’m not finished til I tell you.’
‘Oh yeah, that’ll be alright.’
So we got onto channel 10. By that time we got the film. And they’re already editing and it was going to *go on late news. So I just dictated over the phone what had happened… Barry Woodhouse was still there, waiting for it to happen. He had rang Ruth earlier and said ‘there’s been an accident in the oil rig but Morrie is alright – we think – because his film’s coming in!’ (laughter)
JF: Ruth is your wife?
MP: Yes. So that’s the oil rig.
JF: How did you cope? You see those horrific things.. these days, cameramen would have counselling, that kind of thing.
MP: What’s that?
JF: Well you tell me.
MP: What’s bloody counselling? You don’t have that. You don’t have it. If you are cameraman you don’t have any bloody counselling. You can’t have counselling because you can’t get emotionally involved in what you do. You’ve got to record things.
You know they had the big American SES saying ‘Give us a wooden platform in space, we’ll provide you with pictures.’ That about wraps it up. That’s what you are. You are a recorder. You’ve got the privilege of showing exactly how it happens. If you’re lucky.
JF: I want to ask you. Obviously for any cameraman, having a look at what went on on the rig would be as bad as it gets. I guess you knew some of the people who were killed there?
MP: Oh yes, I knew them not very well, but I knew Alan Lambert, I was friendly on the road with him, you know. Yeah, I knew a few of the people that were there, yeah. But it’s still the fact that a camera is some sort of a protective shield that it doesn’t matter to you. If there’s a shooting on, it doesn’t matter to you because it doesn’t concern you – all you want is a picture. You know. But sometimes you don’t get away with things like that.
JF: Were any changes made as far as legislation was concerned?
MP: Oh yes, boy were there changes made. There’s restrictions on where you can stand, restrictions how you can land, restrictions who can service helicopters instead of milk machine mechanics. It was carrying on for quite a while. They tightened things up. So it has made a difference, yeah. A lot of difference.
Link to Accident Investigation Report Barracouta Platform 22-March-1968