The rescue teams discovered 32 bodies that tragic day, each one tied to a life that was full of promise and dreams now lost.
Among them was 23-year-old Jouzaf Ozelis from North Altona, who had been planning to marry 19-year-old Regina Buzinkas; 19-year-old Cyril Carmichael from North Fitzroy, who had just about to announce his engagement to Glenys Fone; and 32-year-old George Tsehilios, who had left behind his blacksmith shop in Greece and saved for eight years to buy a home for his wife and two sons in Altona.
Ross Bigmore, a 22-year-old carpenter from Reservoir, had been looking forward to marrying Maureen Jones on Melbourne Cup Day. Tony Falzon, 32, also a carpenter, had emigrated from Malta seven years earlier to build a new life. Foreman Charles Lund, 41, had already packed his bags to leave the bridge and take his wife, Leigh, and seven children to Queensland, where he would work on the Mackay Bridge and be closer to his mother.
When Irene Woods rushed from her job to be with her four children, she learned her husband, Pat, 32, had been killed. Mrs. Butters of East Coburg had to wait eight agonising days for the body of her husband, Bernard, 49, to rise to the surface after the crumpled scaffolding was moved. “I knew it was hopeless after the first night,” she said. “It was only a matter of time.”
Then there were the names of men like Ian Miller, Jack Hindshaw, Bill Harburn, Bob West, Jack Grist, Fred Upsdell, Victor Gerada, and many more, all etched into the tragic memory of that day. They left behind not only families but futures that would never come to be.