Another two malfunctions would follow before Dreamworld became the stuff of nightmares, as Australia’s worst theme park disaster in almost 40 years unfolded.

It would leave two families torn apart, first responders emotionally scarred for life and one of Australia’s most iconic tourist attractions on its knees.

Young ride attendant Courtney Williams, 21, had arrived for work at 9.15am that day, clocking on with her colleagues in the security shed as the park prepared to throw open its gates to the excited hordes.

Courtney was told she was rostered as a Level 2 operator on the Thunder River Rapids ride, a role she was unfamiliar with.

She’d previously only worked as a Level 1 ‘deckhand’ on the ride, with more senior staff assigned as Level 2 operators – allowing them to man the unload station – and Level 3 supervisors.

Courtney was given a 90-minute crash course in Level 2 operations to prepare her for the busy day ahead.

Also at Dreamworld that day were Sydney couple Cindy and Mathew Low and their children Kieran, 10, and Isla, 6.

“We went there for just a family day out,” Mathew later recalled.

“The plan was to spend the day there and just enjoy the rides and have a look around, and experience the park itself.”

The Lows’ fun family day out soon turned to absolute horror and heartbreak.

Millions of families like them had ridden the Thunder River Rapids ride largely without incident since it opened in Dreamworld’s ‘Gold Rush Country’ precinct in 1986, five years after millionaire lawnmower manufacturer John Longhurst built the theme park.

Regarded as one of Dreamworld’s tamer thrill rides, the Thunder River Rapids was modelled on one built by Swiss amusement ride giant Intamin but was made ‘in-house’ at the Gold Coast park.

Guests rode the “water coaster” in large inflatable rafts, cascading around a 410m loop that passed through a cave and under the Eureka Mountain Mine Ride.

Considered safe even for young children, it was your classic ‘family-friendly’ theme park ride and one of Dreamworld’s most popular.

At 11.50am on October 25, 2016, the south pump on the Thunder River Rapids ride breaks down. A “code six” alert crackles over the theme park’s two-way, notifying technicians of the earth fault.

A maintenance man, who is an engineer but not an electrician, resets the pump and the ride is cranked back into operation.

At 1.09pm, the south pump fails again.

Kate, Luke, Roozi, Dave and Ebony arrive soon after to find their favourite ride out of action. Oh well, they’ll come back later.

It’s one of a number of sliding doors moments this fateful day.

The engineer again resets the pump, having been shown how to do so by the electricians.

But news of the second fault, which Dreamworld’s official policy dictates should have prompted the ride to be shut down and checked, does not travel up the chain of command.

Kate, Luke, Roozi, Dave and Ebony return to the Thunder River Rapids around 2pm to find it back up and running.

They join the queue, behind another family who are waiting for someone else to join them.

Fatefully, they let the Dorsett family take their place on the ride, joining Cindy and Kieran Low. Mathew and Isla are off elsewhere in the park.

Just after 2pm, the south pump malfunctions for a third time. This time, it will prove catastrophic.

The typically placid ride is rough today.

One raft contains NSW tourists Steven Apthorp, his-then partner Bree Dedini and their two young children and another woman and her daughter.

“It’s rougher than usual,” the woman remarks.

As Kate Goodchild, her daughter Ebony, Luke Dorsett, Roozi Araghi, Cindy Low and her son Kieran joyously bob about on Raft 5 in the pool just before the ride comes to an end, all hell breaks loose.

Water levels have dropped dramatically as a result of the pump’s third failure, and the raft in front containing Steven and his family becomes stuck on the conveyor.

Steven, according to a NSW Supreme Court lawsuit he will later launch against Dreamworld’s owners Ardent Leisure, yells out in vain to stop the ride.

Courtney Williams sees senior ride operator Peter Nemeth’s face “completely drop” as he realises that the rafts are on a collision course, she will later tell the inquest into the disaster.

Nemeth will recall pushing the red emergency stop button “two or three times”, to no avail.

As the raft carrying Kate, Ebony, Luke, Roozi, Cindy and Kieran travels up the conveyor, it collides with the one in front.In what must have been a moment of sheer terror for those on board, both rafts tip nearly vertically.

Steven’s boat somehow slams back down onto the conveyor, right side up.

But the raft behind flips backwards.

While Kieran and Ebony are miraculously flung clear, Kate, Luke, Roozi and Cindy are thrown into the machinery.

Screams of delight that have echoed through the park just moments earlier become screams of hysteria amid the unfathomable carnage.

Shane Green is getting ready to go home for the day.

Dreamworld’s first aid manager is sitting in his office, chatting on the phone to his mum when an urgent cry cut through the static on his park radio.

“Triple two blue!”

He cuts the phone call and heads out the door, jumping on a buggy for the short journey to the Thunder River Rapids.

Dreamworld’s staff used dozens of codes to describe different scenarios.

Code red meant there was a fire, code yellow was a chemical spill.

Code brown, contrary to what Dreamworld staffers often giggled about, was for a holdup alarm.

Triple two blue meant a medical emergency.

It wasn’t one of the most common calls, but did happen from time to time.

Someone slipping at the launch platform for the Thunder River Rapids, or someone skylarking on the log ride and toppling into the water.

There was no code for four people being killed by a conveyor belt, so Mr Green, a decorated former police officer and paramedic who once received a personal commendation from New Zealand’s Prime Minister for treating some injured Kiwi firefighters, had no idea what he was about to witness.

“It was just chaos,” he later recalled.

“There were people, staff, guests, yelling and screaming.

“It was like something out of a disaster movie.”

It takes him less than a minute to travel from his office to the scene.

The first thing he sees is a colleague pulling a body from the water.

Years of training and experience kick in and he dives into the trench.

And that, he said in a recent interview with The Courier-Mail, was “when s--- got really bad”.

Green isn’t the only one to plunge in to the water.

A distraught Dave Turner does as well, desperately trying to save the love of his life, Kate.

He dives into the water several times, only to be pulled back by Dreamworld staff trying to shield him from the horror.

But he shrugs free and dives straight back into the water.

Then his anguished cry rings out: “Why didn’t you stop the ride?”

He will later be seen wandering the Dreamworld car park in a daze, shirtless, covered in mud and grease, struggling to comprehend what has just happened.

Of the six people who fell from the raft, perched virtually bolt upright and wedged between conveyor slats, only two – kids Ebony Goodchild and Kieran Low, would emerge from the water alive.

Asked later how anyone survived at all, the coast’s then top cop, Assistant Commissioner Brian Codd, could think of only one answer.

“In terms of how they escaped, maybe through the providence of God,” he says.

“From what I’ve seen (it’s) almost a miracle that anybody came out of that. If we’re going to be thankful for anything, I’m thankful for that.”

Codd had watched CCTV footage of the harrowing episode – once.

“Once was enough,” he says.

“And I never want to watch it again.”

The scene is a nightmare.

While Shane Green had been hardened by years spent answering the call to violent crimes and car accidents in his previous careers, nothing can prepare him for the horror of the Thunder River Rapids.

And for other Dreamworld staffers, whose first aid experience consisted almost entirely of applying band aids to scraped knees or delivering water to someone suffering heat stroke, the scene is almost too much to bear.

A first-responder will forever remember a young girl in a brightly-coloured dress crying hysterically near the front of the queue to get on the ride.

She’s about the same age as his own daughter and the sight of her brings him to tears.

Before long, word filters out that something terrible has happened at Dreamworld.

While park management initially remain silent, wildly conflicting reports hit social media.

One person has died, then two, then there are four dead, all children, the deceased are all members of the same family, they’re all friends, travelling together on holidays from interstate.

Behind closed doors, urgent briefings are held.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk is told of the tragedy, police chiefs discuss whether it could have been a terrorist attack – a scenario quickly discounted.

It is several hours later, in fading light, before a media conference is held.

Grim-faced officials from emergency services departments, accompanied by then-Dreamworld CEO Craig Davidson, confirm the worst.

Four people, all adults in their 30s and 40s, have died.

Gavin Fuller, from the Queensland Ambulance Service, says the four sustained injuries that were “incompatible with living”.

In a harrowing phone call, Kim Dorsett tells her friend Sandra Brookfield: “Sand, the kids are dead,” she said. “They drowned.”

“I have three children and have lost two of them today – my whole family has been wiped out,” Kim later tells media.

“They really were just wonderful people – that would be the best way to describe them. They were kind, loving souls that would honestly do anything for anyone.”

Davidson, who would bravely lead Dreamworld through its darkest days before resigning as part of a management restructure almost two years later, says – not for the last time – that “thoughts and hearts” go out to the grieving families.

The Dreamworld carpark, usually deserted by closing time, is overtaken by TV satellite trucks, police cars and forensic vans until late into the night.

Generators blare and studio lights glare as TV reporters deliver live crosses for news bulletins.

There will be little sleep for anyone involved tonight.

By the next morning, news of the disaster has gone global.

The Low family’s New Zealand links make the story national news across the Tasman.

It also makes headlines in Europe and the US, which has had more than its share of theme park tragedies.

For a place built for dreams and happy memories, it is hard to imagine a bigger PR disaster.

But it was about to get a whole lot worse.

OTHER CHAPTERS

Part 1: The sliding doors moment that ended in tragedy

Part 3: Villains, botch jobs and scandal plague post-disaster response

Part 4: Explosive Dreamworld failings revealed

CONTINUE READING OUR 4-PART SERIES