The stories

When the rescue teams arrived at the scene, they faced unimaginable devastation. That day, they recovered 32 bodies – workers who had started their shifts as they had countless times before, never knowing they would not return home.

Among them was Jouzaf Ozelis, 23, from North Altona, who had been planning his future with 19-year-old Regina Buzinkas. Cyril Carmichael, just 19, from North Fitzroy, had been preparing to announce his engagement to Glenys Fone. George Tsehilios, 32, had left behind his life in Greece, selling his blacksmith shop to build a new future in Australia. After eight years of hard work, he had finally saved enough to buy a home in Altona for his wife and two sons.

There was Ross Bigmore, 22, a carpenter from Reservoir, who was looking forward to his wedding to Maureen Jones on Melbourne Cup Day. Tony Falzon, 32, had emigrated from Malta seven years earlier in search of opportunity. Charles Lund, 41, a foreman, had already packed his bags, ready to leave the bridge for a new job on the Mackay Bridge in Queensland, where he and his wife Leigh and their seven children would be closer to his mother.

Irene Woods rushed from work the moment she heard the news, desperate to be with her four children. When she arrived, she learned the unthinkable – her husband, Pat, 32, had been killed.

For Mrs. Butters of East Coburg, the grief stretched on. Her husband, Bernard, 49, was missing. She waited eight long days before his body finally surfaced, trapped beneath crumpled scaffolding. “I knew it was hopeless after the first night,” she said. “It was only a matter of time.”

And there were others – Ian Miller, Jack Hindshaw, Bill Harburn, Bob West, Jack Grist, Fred Upsdell, Victor Gerada, and many more.

Each name represents a life lost, a family shattered, and a future that never came to be.