Todd Russell

Todd Russell died at home in Tasmania on the night of Monday 9 November 2026, aged 54, surrounded by family and friends. His family confirmed the death on 10 November Australian time. ABC News reported that the family had not disclosed his illness, while 7NEWS reported that he had been diagnosed with leukaemia more than a year earlier.

On 3 November 2026 Russell had written on social media that years of pain, treatments and setbacks had left him with nothing left to give, and that after eight and a half months in Launceston General Hospital he would go home for the last time to see out his days surrounded by his wife, children, loved ones and friends. He thanked the hospital's staff for their care and kindness.

Tasmanian Premier Jeremy Rockliff wrote: "Vale Todd Russell. Thoughts this morning are with Todd's loved ones and everyone who had the absolute pleasure of knowing him." Brant Webb said of his friend, "He's not a half-hearted guy." Funeral arrangements had not been announced when his death was reported.

Todd Russell lived in Beaconsfield in northern Tasmania, a small gold mining town on the West Tamar north of Launceston. He was 34 at the time of the April 2006 mine collapse, so he was born in about 1971 or 1972; his exact date and place of birth have not been widely published.

As a young man he was a keen Australian rules footballer and hunter, and he remained part of his local football community for much of his life. He did not take up a mining career until his late twenties, when he went to work underground at the Beaconsfield gold mine.

At 9:26pm on 25 April 2006, a magnitude 2.3 earthquake triggered a rockfall about 925 metres underground in the Beaconsfield mine. Seventeen people were in the mine. Fourteen escaped, Larry Knight, 44, was killed, and Russell and Brant Webb were trapped in the basket at the end of a telehandler, where they had been fixing steel mesh to a wall. Russell's lower body was buried, and the two men cut themselves free with utility knives.

They were presumed dead until 30 April, when rescuers Pat Ball and Steve Saltmarsh heard them shout. Until then they had lived on groundwater collected in their helmets and a single muesli bar Webb had brought for his shift. Russell wrote the date and time of each rescue blast on his clothing, and the men sang Kenny Rogers' "The Gambler" to keep their spirits up. Food, water, medical supplies, letters and iPods were then sent down a 90 millimetre pipe while a raise borer cut a rescue tunnel through quartz rock. In one letter to his wife Russell wrote, "It's not much of a room we have up here."

Rescuers broke through early on 9 May 2006. Russell was freed at 4:54am, and just before 6am the two men walked out of the lift cage unaided, punching the air and switching their safety tags to safe. He was treated at Launceston General Hospital for knee and back injuries and was discharged in time to join more than a thousand mourners at Larry Knight's funeral that afternoon.

The rescue drew hundreds of journalists to Beaconsfield. The Nine Network bought the miners' story for a special called The Great Escape, the Foo Fighters released "Ballad of the Beaconsfield Miners" in 2007, and the telemovie Beaconsfield, with Lachy Hulme playing Russell, was broadcast in 2012. Russell attended the 2008 coronial inquest into the disaster in Launceston and later spoke at safety conventions. He served as a volunteer firefighter for 31 years and retired as chief of the Beaconsfield Fire Brigade in 2026.

Russell was married with children. He said the media attention after the rescue, which lasted for about 18 months, left him feeling that he had gone to work as a normal person and come out with his identity lost. The loss of his parents in the years after the disaster deepened his struggles with his mental health, and he later described coming home to find his wife and children packed and ready to leave him. He sought professional help, worked to rebuild his family relationships and became a proud grandfather.

In a 2022 podcast he described himself as two characters: "There's Popeye, who's a big tough man. But there's Tweety Bird." He said he still could not understand why he had been spared, and that he got up every morning grateful to see another day.

The Beaconsfield rescue became a lasting symbol of endurance and mateship in Australia, and Russell and Webb's walk out of the mine shaft remains one of the best known images in Australian television news. Russell's later openness about trauma, depression and asking for help gave the story a second meaning, and his three decades with the Beaconsfield Fire Brigade made him a fixture of the town that had gathered at the mine gate to wait for him.