About the book
In October 1973 the coastal freighter Blythe Star rolled over and sank off the south-west coast of Tasmania on a routine run from Hobart. All ten crew got into a single inflatable life raft. The search that followed was the largest sea and air search Australia had mounted, and it was called off without finding them. Nine days later the raft came ashore on the Tasman Peninsula, and three of the men walked out through heavy bush to a logging track to raise the alarm. Three of the ten did not survive.
Piia Wirsu made the ABC podcast series Expanse about the sinking, and wrote this book with Mick Doleman, who was an eighteen-year-old deckhand on the ship and later a leader of the Maritime Union. The disaster led directly to AUSREP, Australia's mandatory ship position-reporting system.
Notes
To come.