A night Keith will never forget
Being trapped in a blazing building, and knowing that you only have minutes to escape with your life, is a nightmarish scenario that fortunately very few of us will ever experience.
But aged just 22, Atherton LR physio Keith O’Brien faced a real life fight for survival, and had to escape from a fierce inferno that eventually claimed the lives of many of his friends.
In 2000 Keith was staying at the Palace backpackers hostel in Childers, Australia when an arson attack engulfed the building in flames, killing 15 people. A local man called Robert Long, a loner who had a grudge against backpackers, was eventually charged with murder after he was found guilty of deliberately starting the fire.
Having survived the blaze, Keith became a key witness, and his role in rescuing one of his room mates from the blaze was recognised in 2008, when he was awarded a Commendation for Brave Conduct - known as a CBC - by the Australian government.
Although Keith has been involved in our league for several years, firstly at Ashton Town and now at Atherton LR, and has many friends and contacts in non-league football, he had always kept his story of that night to himself.
But now, nearly ten years later, he has broken his silence to share his experiences, and explain what impact the night itself and the subsequent events have had on his life since.
Finding yourself in a situation where your life is in danger is obviously not something you forget in a hurry, and Keith’s memories of the night are still very clear all these years later.
“Back in 2000 I decided to go on a working holiday, just travelling around the world. I was 21 at the time when I set off and when I ended up in Australia, I found work fruit picking in Childers, which is about three hours north of Brisbane. I stayed at the local hostel and on the night of the 22nd June 2000 I had been celebrating my 22nd birthday.
“I had a mate there Phil, who was an Aussie, and sometimes we would just fall asleep on the settee in the lounge and wake one another up in the morning. But on that night we went to bed. As it turned out it was really lucky we did.
“I woke up at about twenty past twelve to the sound of people screaming and smashing windows. I looked out of my room window, and there were flames shooting up the side of the building, right in the part of the hostel that I’d been not much more than half an hour previously.
“The room I was in had bars on the windows. I was on the first floor and there was a veranda outside but there was a four or five foot gap between the room and the veranda. I woke my room mate Kelly up, and told her we needed to get out, and I thought that we’d be able to walk out. I’d been there six or seven weeks by then, and walked in and out hundreds of times, and you just think you’ll be able to do the same.
“But as we set off through the building, the smoke was so thick you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. The building was just an old wooden building and it was like a tinderbox. Kelly fell over and I picked her up. We fought our way back in to the room through the door, and I had to kick in the door to get back in.
“There were already people out on the veranda, and I managed to get Kelly and myself out through the gaps between the bars of the windows on to the veranda. I shoved her through and she got pulled out and then some of other backpackers yanked me out. How I managed it I don’t really know.
“It was a big building, and while you see pictures of house fires but this was something else. The whole building was alight and you knew people were trapped inside because you could hear them screaming. There was nothing anyone could do. The flames were so strong there was no way anyone could get in. In the end, 15 of my friends died.”
Having survived unscathed, Keith became a key witness when the investigations began.
“The fire alarms had been switched off about a week earlier and we hadn’t known that. From the minute the press started turning up, they were asking if we had heard alarms, and it was obvious that they hadn’t been working.
“For a week afterwards, I spent a lot of time being interviewed by police, as my account of what I saw was very clear and it has never changed. I stayed in Australia for another six or seven weeks and then that was my time up.
“I had rung my mum within about six hours of the fire to let her know I was OK, and word soon got round back home that I had been involved. My parents did a lot of television interviews at the time, at one point they had BBC and Sky vans parked on their driveway.”
“I never said where I was from, but I wanted to make sure I did plenty of interviews to put my points forward and make sure that people who were responsible for what happened were held accountable, and they were. We had to take a civil action against the hostel owners to bring justice for everyone.
“It has meant that legislation in Australia has been changed, and hopefully it will mean that the chance of it happening again is reduced, which will mean people didn’t die in vain.
Once the suspect was identified and charged, Keith had to travel back to Australia as a witness for the trial in 2002
“The court case was held at Brisbane High Court, and I was a main witness. I ended up being cross examined for a full day, and I was accused of starting a fire myself, but the defence were clutching at straws a bit. I knew the guy who did it, Robert Long, he was a loner and a bit of a funny bloke, and he had a grudge against backpackers.
“He deliberately started the fire using fertilisers and ran off after starting the fire. Although there were 15 people killed he was only charged with two murders, of twins called Kelly and Stacey Slater who were from Western Australia. If he had got off with one, he could have got off with them all.”
Not surprisingly, the after effects of the incident have affected Keith in a number of ways.
“For a long time I was suffering with post traumatic stress disorder. I’ve seen more psychiatrists and psychologists than most people. You hear about a lot of people going to that Priory clinic and I don’t know why, because I’ve been there myself and it’s not much cop!
“It’s hard for me because my birthday is the day before the anniversary and since the fire I’ve not celebrated my birthday. I won’t do it and I can’t do it.
“I’ve got the date tattooed on my neck and the Australian Southern Cross tattooed above that, and Japanese cherry blossom on one leg. Those are all tributes to the people I knew who died that night. I’ll never forget them and I don’t want to forget them, that why I got myself tattooed up like that.
“Some of the parents of people who died have kept in touch, but there have been others who have been quite awful towards those of us who survived, just because we were lucky enough to escape.
“I’ve been back to Australia quite a few times since, going to memorial services and that sort of thing, it hasn’t put me off travelling or going back there. I’ve stood there and made speeches in front of families who lost relatives in the fire, and have had more informal conversations about the night with them, telling them what we had been up to, what their own children had been doing that night.
“People have said that I must wish I never decided to go to Australia in the first place, but I was travelling for two years and had loads of great experiences and just one terribly bad one. I’m not the only person who has ever had anything bad happen to them. You can’t let it grind you down.
On the contrary, it’s not something I want to put to the back of my mind. It’s something that I never want to forget, ever.
Aside of the memories, Keith has another permanent reminder of his experience - a Commendation for Brave Conduct, known as a CBC, awarded by the Australian government. He says it was totally unexpected.
“Out of the blue last year, a letter arrived at my parents’ house addressed to me, and it said I was being put forward for an award. They wanted to know if I was prepared to accept it if nominated.
“Obviously I didn’t do what I did on the night to get an award, but it’s nice to be acknowledged for doing something good. My mum said she would like me to take it, so I had a think and decided to go for it. They asked me to go to Australia to accept it but I would have had to pay my own fare to get there, so that wasn’t really an option. Then they asked if I wanted to go to London to accept it, but they kept moving the date and in the end it was just sent to me.
“It’s not the sort of thing you expect to get thanked for, although you don’t go looking for thanks in that situation. But it’s a lovely award and has a beautiful citation on it, and you get five individual medals for formal wear too.”
After coming back to the UK, Keith began working for Nuffield Health in their well being division, and became involved with the rehabilitation of people with long term injuries. But his philosophy on life had been changed forever.
“I lost every possession I had with me that night, everything I’d accumulated from a couple of years of travelling. When you go through an experience like that, I think you want to do more, and you want to cram as much into life as you can.
“You want to do stuff for others, you want to help people. That’s what motivated me to offer to help out at Ashton Town and now at Atherton LR. If I wasn’t coming down to LR, these lads probably wouldn’t have anyone to look after them on the physio side. There are plenty of clubs in the lower leagues in non-league football that don’t have anyone to help them out on a professional basis.
“If I can fix one player for a season or help just one player out in some way, you’ve done a job for the club. I’ve had a lot of help in my life generally, and it’s just nice to give a little back to people when you have had help yourself.”
One unexpected offshoot of Keith’s travels in Australia was that it indirectly led to him meeting his wife Sian.
“Some friends from back home used to live in Wigan and one of them went to university with my wife, and I helped him in out when I was in Australia. He needed digs when he was over at the Millenium and I sorted him out in Sydney and we became close friends. Through him I met Sian and it was the best thing that could have happened, as our relationship gave me something to focus on and help me get back on track.”
Listening to Keith’s story, you might think that as time goes on and the memories begin to fade a bit, he might be tempted to settle down to a more relaxed and settled lifestyle. But he has other plans in mind.
“I don’t want to be like one of those old fellas who sits at the end of a bar and says, “You know what, I could have done this or done that”. I’d like to move away and try something different, and maybe at the end of next year we will think about emigrating. I’m 30 now so I’m young enough to do it, there’s plenty of time, and we’ve got no kids.
“The actions and experiences of that night at Childers have moulded everything I’ve done since, and made me the person I am now. There may be good points and bad points, but it’s made me what I am. You look at life differently when you experience something like that, and it’s driven me to try and better myself and have a better life.”
Note - For more background on the Childers blaze, and Keith’s involvement in the incident, there are numerous stories on the BBC website and elsewhere. Here’s a selection of links.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/1875710.stm
Keith with his award - click below for close ups
Certificate close up
Citation close up
The Vodkat League on-line magazine
