Pike River movie brings Anna Osborne and Sonya Rockhouse’s fight to the screen

They didn’t ask for this. Two “ordinary” women whose men went to work in a coal mine one Friday and never came home. It’s 15 years since 29 workers died at Pike River. A new movie, starring Melanie Lynskey and Robyn Malcolm, tells the story of a wife and a mother and the unexpected friendship that empowered an ongoing fight for justice. Anna Osborne, Sonya Rockhouse and the film’s director Robert Sarkies spoke to Kim Knight about the making of Pike River ahead of its Greymouth premiere.

The images are the colour of a coal shovel. Blue-black. Grainy-gritty. Leaked visuals from cameras inside the Pike River mine.

Proof, says film director Robert Sarkies, that the families of the 29 men who died underground had been lied to.

It is a pivotal moment in both the real-life and movie versions of the Pike story: the realisation there is an intact body in the mine, that fire has not turned everything to ash, that police may be able to collect forensic evidence for a criminal prosecution.

Sarkies needs to show these images in his movie. Somehow, he has to recreate a photograph of a body in the mine.

“Who do I talk to first? I talk to Rowdy. I ask what he thought about that, and how best to handle it. It needed to be done respectfully.”

Rowdy Durbridge is the families’ representative and mining technical adviser to the team shooting Pike River, the movie that premieres in Greymouth on October 13. He was also a Pike River miner, off work on the day of the explosion that killed 29 men including his son, Daniel Herk, 36.

“Rowdy says to me, ‘I want to do it’. So Rowdy and I walked up to an abandoned train tunnel one day, just the two of us, and he dressed up in the Pike River gear that he hadn’t worn for, at that point, 14 years, and lay in the dirt to be photographed. To represent all of those men. His crew.”

On a Friday afternoon in 2010, just five weeks shy of Christmas, there was a methane explosion at an underground coal mine 46km northeast of Greymouth.

Two men make it out alive. Loader driver Russell Smith is rescued by colleague Daniel Rockhouse, whose father Neville is the mine’s safety and training manager. Daniel’s little brother Ben is still somewhere in the tunnels, where officials maintain the 29 workers they’ve lost contact with could be awaiting rescue at a fresh air base. For four days, families hope. Media descend from New Zealand and beyond. The mine workers include men from Australia, Scotland and South Africa. The world is watching. Just three months earlier, 33 miners trapped after a collapse at a copper and gold mine in Chile had been successfully rescued after 69 days.

Camera crews tape cables to footpaths, days begin and end with the thrum of helicopters. On Tuesday afternoon, families receive a text message. There is “a significant update”.

Melanie Lynskey (left) and Robyn Malcolm as, respectively, Anna Osborne and Sonya Rockhouse in a scene from the upcoming movie Pike River.

Inside the Greymouth Civic Centre, Pike River’s chief executive Peter Whittall tells them gas levels inside Pike were falling and preparations were being made to enter the mine. Elation is short-lived. Seconds later, Whittall informs families there has been a second explosion. Police say it is not survivable; the operation is moving from rescue to recovery.

“The scene turned to one of profound distress,” records the report of the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy.

It is an outrageously sunny day. The sound from inside the Civic Centre carries through the walls and right across the carpark.

Sarkies: “The description someone gave to us was that it was like an animal howling, like a sort of single being, which felt almost impossible to capture.”

Anna Osborne (left), Melanie Lynskey and Sonya Rockhouse stand outside the real-life gates to the Pike River mine, during the making of a new movie about the 2010 tragedy and the ongoing fight for justice for 29 men who died.

Greymouth, 2023. Sarkies knows that multiple takes of this scene will be too exhausting to shoot. He asks Rowdy and the two women who inspired this film – Anna Osborne and Sonya Rockhouse – to speak to the crowd of almost 200 who have gathered to recreate the moment Pike families were told their men were dead.

“I just asked them to describe what that moment was like. Everyone was in tears before the scene even started, and then they sat with that description, that direct description from three people who were there. And the emotion in that room, even though it was all pretend, was visceral. That came directly from those Pike River families.”

Decades of cliched media reports paint the West Coast as a region of rugged beauty, populated by resilient hard workers, who don’t trust outsiders. It’s a simplistic and stupid generalisation. But Sarkies must have wondered – how would locals react to the film crew’s presence?

Pike River family members Anna Osborne, "Rowdy" Durbridge and Sonya Rockhouse are interviewed by Herald reporter Derek Cheng (far left) in 2019.

“Certainly when you go to Greymouth and say you’re working on Pike River, there’s always a kind of an intake of breath. A pause. A sort of an assessment. ‘Are you doing it the right way? Or are you here to re-traumatise us?’

“What I consistently picked up was a kind of a feeling of guilt that many people have. That they could have, should have, said something. It’s like the whole mining community knew things were not good at Pike. It’s a small community, they all talk, they all understand the industry. These are not stupid people – quite the opposite – and it was a form of collective blindness, perhaps ... and the guilt that a lot of people still feel around that, it’s real, you know?

“This film is going to be a hard watch for a lot of people on the Coast. I hope that, ultimately, watching it gives them some catharsis.”

Pike River, written by Fiona Samuel and directed by Sarkies, stars Melanie Lynskey (Yellowjackets, Heavenly Creatures) and Robyn Malcolm (After the Party, Outrageous Fortune) as Anna Osborne and Sonya Rockhouse – two women who lost, respectively, a husband and a son in the disaster.

Sarkies, whose previous directing credits include Scarfies, Out of the Blue and Consent: The Louise Nicholas Story, says making Pike River changed his world view.

“I had an innate trust in authority figures. We’re a fair and egalitarian and uncorrupt society? Researching and making Pike River has told me that’s all a crock of shit.”

Director Robert Sarkies with actors Robyn Malcolm and Erroll Shand during the making of the movie Pike River.

The Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy notes that in the 48 days before the mine blew there had been 21 reports of methane gas levels reaching explosive volumes.

A prediction the mine would be producing one million tonnes of coal a year by 2008 was “illusory” (in total, it had shipped just 42,000 tonnes). Development costs had escalated and, during 2010, Pike River Coal had raised $140 million from shareholders, was seeking another $70m and had borrowed $66m from New Zealand Oil and Gas.

“There were numerous warnings of a potential catastrophe at Pike River,” the Royal Commission said. “The warnings were not heeded.”

Pike River shouldn’t have happened. What the movie about Pike River shows is just how hard it has been to hold anybody to account.

It’s a story that has, so far, spanned four general elections and two changes of government. Multiple Prime Ministers, politicians and high-profile leaders (including trade unionist Helen Kelly, who died in 2016) have become enmeshed in its narrative. Successive commitments to re-enter the mine and recover bodies never eventuated and in 2016, and again in 2021, families have blockaded access to Pike to prevent its permanent sealing. Most recently, boreholes were drilled and specialist cameras deployed. Police have launched a criminal investigation and are currently working with the Crown Solicitor as they consider whether to lay charges.

At different times, different members of the Pike River families became the public face of grief, anger and frustration. At first, Sarkies observed from afar. He was in Invercargill, in pre-production for Two Little Boys, when the explosion happened.

“I was drawn to the humanity of it, but for a long time could not see the film in it.”

But in 2016, he watched Sonya Rockhouse and Anna Osborne choosing to fight back. The women had orchestrated a road blockade and occupation that lasted 107 days and, ultimately, stopped concrete trucks from permanently sealing the portal to Pike.

Anna Osborne and Sonya Rockhouse in 2016, protesting the sealing of the Pike River mine. Photo / Barry Uddstrom

“It suddenly felt like a story that could inspire others, a story that had to be told.”

Robyn Malcolm on playing Sonya: “Sonya and Anna are national heroes but had also been through something so awful and so painful, so there was a double sense of responsibility. There was this quite weighty thing around it … then we went into the rehearsal room and we were cackling away like crazy bitches in about three minutes because they are just so funny. They put us at ease, because of course they’ve lived it, they’re no strangers to their story – we were the strangers coming into their story.”

Melanie Lynskey on playing Anna: “There’s a toughness, she’s funny, very funny. And I also related to her love for Milt and her fight for justice for this man she felt this way about ... When I first read the script, I was struck by how beautiful the depiction of female friendship was. It was something I hadn’t seen too often in a screenplay. Just this wonderful friendship between these two middle-aged women who find strength in each other.”

Anna and Sonya will tell you they didn’t go looking for this. But the one good thing to come from it all?

“My late husband Pete has been gone for four years,” says Sonya. “One of the last things he said to me was that it gave him great comfort to know I had Anna to help look after me and be there for me, and for us to be there for each other.”

They’d never met before Pike. Sonya lived in Christchurch and Anna in Ngahere in the Grey Valley. On the day of the explosion, she went straight to Pike River, demanded to be let through the gates and then refused to leave.

“I remember Sonya saying she’d seen me on the TV ... and she goes ‘oh, she’s a bolshie bitch I’ll stay back from her’.”

Actor Robyn Malcolm (left) and the real-life Sonya Rockhouse.

Sonya: “I didn’t like having my photo taken by my mother, let alone by the world’s media. This was completely foreign to me. And to see Anna on TV? I was in awe of her. I thought, ‘wow, she’s got the balls to do that. I couldn’t do that’. I was still incredibly naive. I believed they would get them out. I believed they were still alive, or I wanted to believe they were still alive ... when I saw Anna and a few others talking in the media, I was concerned. Stupidly, I thought, ‘oh no, the Government might not do anything if we start causing waves’.

“How ridiculous,” asks Sonya with the benefit of 15 years’ hindsight, “was that?”

They remember their first lunch together. At Blanchfield’s Bakery they discovered matching work histories as teacher aides, a shared love of second-hand shopping – and a grief they could explain to no one but recognised in each other.

Sonya: “Anna said she loved that she could talk to me about Pike and not have to feel guilty that she was talking about Pike. When I look back, in those days we were obsessed.

Anna: “It controlled our lives.”

Sonya: “We were consumed with anger, we were consumed with loss. They continuously promised us things and then at the eleventh hour they would go back on that promise. I mean that plays with your emotions terribly. That’s why Anna and I bonded. Because we could talk to each other.”

Anna: “With Sonya I could be real. I could cry, I could scream, I could laugh, I could talk, I could do what I wanted. I felt guilty about smiling, outside of being with Sonya, because my husband was still down in that bloody shithole of a place.”

They’re speaking to the Herald via Zoom, sharing a couch, a computer screen and, for the past nine months, Sonya’s house.

Anna waves a moon-booted foot at the camera.

“It’s been a hell of a year.”

She is a cancer survivor (early in the making of Pike River actors were hired to perform a bespoke read-through of the script in case she never saw the finished version). She also has Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, a progressive neurological condition that affects nerves, weakens muscles and has contributed, variously, to a broken hip, wrist, foot and pelvis. Right now, Anna is recovering from foot surgery.

“Sonya has been my nurse, my support person, my taxi driver, everything.”

November 19 marks 15 years since the Pike River tragedy. If Anna and Sonya’s fight can be condensed into three universal goals – truth, justice and accountability – at its heart, it is still deeply and necessarily personal.

The 29 men who died at Pike River, as depicted on a photo board in 2010, at a memorial garden 12 kilometres from the mine portal. Photo / Brett Phibbs

Milton “Milt” Osborne, 54, was a walrus-moustachioed husband and father of two, elected unopposed to his second term as a Grey District councillor. Benjamin “Ben” Rockhouse, 21, was a son and brother, part-way through a geology degree and planning a move to Australia.

Sonya: “This time of year is very difficult. I’m starting to have dreams about Ben and I get quite teary ... people think I’m staunch, I can just be driving in my car and a song will come on and it just brings me to tears. That never goes away. That anger will always be there inside me, buried, but I don’t let it consume me because there’s just no point.”

Anna: “But let it be known that should we need to get our angry voices on, and our big girl pants on again, we certainly will.”

They love the film and they hope it will help people understand why they’ve kept fighting.

Anna says “this is our truth”.

And if people don’t like it?

“That’s none of our business, you know? We are authentic, honest and we’ve worked incredibly hard to get to where we are, and that shows in the movie. And it’s not over yet.”

Early in this interview, they describe themselves as “ordinary” women; nothing special, they insist.

Sonya: “It’s embarrassing sometimes, the recognition. This is not why we did it. For me, I was like a mother lion that lost their child. He was just a gorgeous boy and he didn’t deserve ...”

Anna: “My husband ... I was so blessed to have him. My cancer had come back just before Pike and he goes ‘Anna, we’ve been through this before, and we’ll go through it again together’ and that was a month before Pike blew, and he wasn’t there.

“He didn’t like Pike. He was two weeks short of walking out. For many nights, I’d close my eyes and all I could see was his body laying in a pool of water with the water dripping down and it being cold and I just didn’t want that for him. I needed him home. That was my – there was something in me – that said ‘I’ve got to do something. I cannot leave him. I’ve got to at least try’. Because he was the love of my life.”

Milt is played by actor John Leigh (Shortland Street’s Lionel Skeggins).

“When I saw the photo, I did a double-take,” says Anna. “I don’t know how I’m going to handle this, because it really could be Milton. I don’t know if I actually want to meet him. It was really funny in the end ... he was about two feet shorter than Milt, he was a bit stockier, he walked differently, laughed differently, smiled differently.”

Sonya’s son Ben was played by Richard Crouchley (Black Hands).

“Ben had a very strong jawline and this guy does too. I knew instantly who he was, but we didn’t really talk ... I did struggle ... Erroll Shand who plays Pete looks nothing like him, but he’s got Pete’s nature. Very, very calm and very kind and laid-back. Erroll is very much like that. When I see him and Robyn showing affection, that gets me in the feels.”

Actors Robyn Malcolm and Erroll Shand, as Sonya Rockhouse and her partner Pete, push through media in a scene from the movie Pike River.

Robert Sarkies says there are challenges in turning a real-life story into a movie script. Lucy Lawless, for example, plays trade unionist Helen Kelly – the woman Sonya and Anna credit with teaching them how to fight – but her arrival in the script comes relatively late.

“That would be unusual in terms of story structure. You wouldn’t normally do that if you were telling a Hollywood version of this story. We wanted to reflect the truth. There is construction, but we’re not changing essential truths. I think the awareness that one day we would be showing the film to the families ...”

Sarkies compiled a 200-page visual document that formed the basis of the film’s aesthetic. There are scenes that every Coaster will recognise. Smoked chicken pizza on a blackboard menu. That particular shade of blue house paint. Gumboots at the door and grown men with lunch packs because there are no cafes or pie shops when your workplace is kilometres underground.

“We were pretty obsessive about authenticity. If you get the details right, and just connect them with the truth of the story, then the whole thing just has this air of authenticity,” says Sarkies.

Why make a film when everybody knows how that terrible day ended?

“The Pike River story is so confusing that people, 15 years later, aren’t quite sure what to think about it. They just know there was an explosion and a bunch of angry families, and they’re not quite sure why they’re angry or why they would want their men out of the mine, aren’t the men just skeletons now? All completely valid questions,” says Sarkies.

A film, he says, has the capacity to get under your skin. To answer those questions in a “felt” way.

“It enables you to walk in the shoes of those people and experience what that must have been like.

“What we don’t know is what those families went through and how they fought together to create changes ... so that evidence could be found to potentially bring people who are responsible to justice.

“I hope it will inspire someone, other New Zealanders, to fight when they know they are facing an injustice or a wrong. I think the story proves that if you fight, you can win. And that’s rare.”

Pike River’s red carpet, invite-only premiere takes place at Greymouth’s Regent Theatre on October 13. For full details of nationwide “in conversation” and special Q&A sessions ahead of October 30’s general release, go to: www.madman.co.nz/pike-river/

Kim Knight is a senior reporter on the New Zealand Herald’s lifestyle desk. Her first journalism job was at the Greymouth Evening Star.