‘You felt it’: How the West Gate collapse haunted a boy from Newport

Dennis McIntosh was 11 when Australia’s worst industrial accident killed 35 men. More than 50 years later, his play honours the families left behind. AdvertisementStage‘You felt it’: How the West Gate collapse haunted a boy from NewportDennis McIntosh was 11 when Australia’s worst industrial accident killed 35 men. More than 50 years later, his play honours the families left behind.By Paul KalinaMarch 5, 2026From left, Daniela Farinacci, Steve Bastoni and Dennis McIntosh.Simon SchluterSaveYou have reached your maximum number of saved items.Remove items from your saved list to add more.ShareAAAThis is the version that most people know. Late in the morning of October 15, 1970, a section of the West Gate Bridge, then under construction, collapsed. Thirty-five men died that day; some were crushed, some fell 50 metres into the water, some burned after tanks of diesel fuel exploded. A further 18 were injured. A subsequent Royal Commission found critical failures in the bridge’s design and construction methods, but no charges were laid. The bridge finally opened to traffic in 1978.Dennis McIntosh was an 11-year-old student at Newport Primary School and vividly remembers the day it happened. “You felt it and heard it,” he recalls. From the netball courts, he watched smoke rising from the bay. Over the next few days there were many funerals at his church.He also remembers overhearing talk about problems with the bridge. A similarly designed box girder bridge in Wales had collapsed during construction a few months earlier. Dennis’ father, DF McIntosh, had the same name as one of the resident engineers working on the West Gate. Letters intended for the engineer arrived at the family home. “I remember Dad opening letters, saying, ‘Mum, there’s something wrong with the bridge’.”Playwright Dennis McIntosh remembers the feel and sound of the bridge collapse.Emily DoyleThe bridge had been many years in the planning, a 2.5 kilometre span linking the city and established suburbs in the east with the rapidly expanding western suburbs, at that time an industrial and manufacturing hub and home to large numbers of post-war European migrants and blue-collar workers. “It was a big engineering feat. There were 183,000 people living in the west. This [bridge] was a big thing.”McIntosh has lived a hugely varied life since leaving school in year 9 to milk cows and cart hay; he’s been a shearer, labourer, swimming coach, and language teacher in remote Australia. Jack of all trades doesn’t come close, especially when you add playwright to the list of achievements.He enrolled in university when he was 40, primarily to gain the skills to write about his daughter, who had developed a brain injury during her infancy and was about to turn 21. He wrote poetry, which was published in The Overland literary journal, two books and completed a PhD.AdvertisementBut somehow, the story of the bridge never left him. He tried to write it as a book, “but every time it was so convoluted, so complex”.Through a mutual actor friend, McIntosh was introduced to theatre director Iain Sinclair. Not being from Melbourne, Sinclair didn’t know about the disaster. He was shocked to learn that it was the worst industrial accident in Australian history and that it wasn’t in the public consciousness “in the way that it should be”.Related ArticlePerforming artsThis dance work might be our best lesson yet in what we’ve got to lose“And I was fascinated by the reasons for that.”Sinclair himself is from a family of coal miners in northern England. His cousins and uncles worked in the pits. His father got a scholarship for athletics, which brought him to Australia.What attracted Sinclair was that the story of the bridge collapse was being told by someone from the working class.“I’m acutely aware that quite often working-class stories are seen from the above perspective: Upton Sinclair, John Steinbeck, even Orwell. Middle-class people looking down into the culture.Advertisement“But this play, the voice of this play, is working class speaking for itself on its own terms, which I think is admirable for the Melbourne Theatre Company. The state company has chosen to let that story be told from its own value system.”Among the shocking discoveries Sinclair made was that many of the engineers and managers who worked on the bridge took it off their CVs afterwards, despite being promoted and even winning awards.There were also backhanded suggestions during the Royal Commission hearings that the militancy of the unionised workers and labour issues were partly to blame. Photo: The AgeThe bridge’s collapse raised a lot of “intellectual material” — engineering problems, industrial relations, unionism — but it was the human story and McIntosh’s focus on the workers that interested him.“What really resonated for me was that there was a blind spot in the conversation, and the blind spot was the 35 families.”Sinclair directed the MTC’s highly acclaimed 2019 production of A View From The Bridge (Age critic Cameron Woodhead gave the “astonishing production” five stars).AdvertisementHe worked with McIntosh from the play’s early stages. “We d