Modesto Varischetti

Biography Varischetti was born in Gorno, in northern Italy, near Milan. The region was a well known mining area and he became a miner at age 13. He married his wife Maria and had five children, but like others in the poor region, he (along with two of his brothers) left Italy to earn better money in Australia.

Arriving in February 1900, he first worked in Clunes, Victoria. He traveled to Italy again, before returning in 1903 and being attracted to the Westralia & Eastern Extension Mine in Bonnievale. The following day, rescuers on the No. 9 level heard tapping in reply to their hammer blows on the rock and realised that Varishchetti was alive.

The divers first reached Varischetti five days after the flooding and provided him with food, clothes, candles, messages, and letters of encouragement. The divers visited daily while pumps worked around the clock. Two local doctors, Robert Mitchell and Henry Ellis, monitored the divers and the trapped man's condition throughout the operation. He is buried in the Kalgoorlie Cemetery.

Legacy The rescue was followed throughout Australia and overseas. Public subscriptions and testimonials were raised for the divers; Hughes was awarded the Albert Medal (second class) and the Western Australian Minister for Mines, Henry Gregory, was decorated by the King of Italy. George Darrell also wrote a play called The Land of Gold (1907)

Varischetti's grave is marked by a headstone erected in 1987 and is part of a heritage walk trail devised by the Kalgoorlie-Boulder Cemetery Board. The Diving gear used in the rescue is displayed in the museum at the Coolgardie Railway Station, In his home town of Gorno, the rescue is commemorated by the Ecomuseo delle Miniere di Gorno, which includes a reconstruction of the rescue.

Australian folk group Cloudstreet tells Modesto Varischetti's story in a song. A folk song about the rescue, Down in the Goldmine, set to the English song Down in the Coalmine, was collected in the booklet Moondyne Joe and other Sandgroper Ballads and has been recorded by the Australian folk group Cloudstreet.

Tom Austen's book The Entombed Miner (1986) gives a full account of the rescue, which is also recounted in Malcolm Uren's goldfields history Glint of Gold.

The Italian–Australian documentary s story through interviews with miners in Gorno and Australia. The story was the subject of a 2022 episode of the history podcast Forgotten Australia

The rescue has remained a reference point in later Australian mine emergencies. When the Emu mine at Agnew flooded in 1989, police divers were sent down in the hope that the missing men had survived in an air pocket "like Modesto Varischetti", and the story attracted renewed attention during the 2006 Beaconsfield mine rescue in Tasmania, alongside which it is often ranked.