Final photograph of Tasmanian jumping castle reveals crucial clue
A photo taken just minutes before a jumping castle flew 10m into the air in Tasmania and killed six children may hold the key to solving the mystery of the disaster.
Tasmania
Don't miss out on the headlines from Tasmania. Followed categories will be added to My News.
For 29 minutes, it was bliss.
The blue and yellow Crayon Playland jumping castle was set up, the purple and pink striped zorb balls were ready to go, too.
It was the Thursday before Christmas – the last day of classes for Hillcrest Primary School students so teachers could clean up their rooms on the Friday.
The children were stoked.
A final chance to hang out with their mates before the long, summer holidays.
For the year 6 children, it was the end of an era – they had the first go on the jumping castle and the zorb balls. The school Facebook page called it the “Big Day In”, starting at 9.30am.
It was the kind of day that students, teachers and parents wanted to remember.
Now they wish they could forget how six children died, three were injured and the entire school community was forever changed when the jumping castle and zorb balls took off on a deadly flight.
A never before seen photograph shows a happy scene before the horror.
The photograph is achingly detailed, and looks like a scene repeated at hundreds of schools across Australia each year.
It may also contain clues as to what went wrong.
When it was taken, it was meant to be a memento, not something that a coroner would have to look at when trying to decide whether any children’s lives could have been saved.
But at 9.59am, the jumping castle and zorb balls seen in that photograph were picked up by a gust of wind. They flew across the width of the school’s oval – witnesses said they reached heights of 10m – before crashing into trees on an embankment.
Parents who had dropped off their children just hours earlier received a bulk text message telling them to pick them up – there had been an accident.
The news made the world stop in its tracks.
It compelled parents to immediately go home and hug their children. Nobody could believe it. Nobody wanted to believe it.
How cruel for something as joyous as a jumping castle to cause such heartbreak.
How horrific for the classmates, teachers and school community who witnessed it all unfold.
How painful for the parents to have had their sons and daughters taken from them too soon.
There was Chace Harrison, 11, a promising basketballer; Peter Dodt, 12, a redhead and “little hero” to his family; Addison Stewart, 11, a “mother hen” to her siblings; Jalailah Jayne-Maree Jones, 12, who had an “infectious grin”; Jye Sheehan, 12, (Argentine footballer) Lionel Messi’s biggest fan; and Zane Mellor, 12.
There was also Beau Medcraft, who was on the jumping castle that day but survived, who lost his “gaming wingman” and friend, Jye.
Declean Brown spent weeks in hospital in Hobart – he had to learn to walk again.
The parents of those kids will never be the same. Their heartache will never fade.
They also have questions. They need closure.
“We’re hoping to get to the truth,” one parent, who preferred to remain anonymous, says. “They didn’t even call the families of the injured children, those not involved were told to pick up their children from school.”
And they want to know why more was not done to help them in the aftermath of the tragedy. “We didn’t hear anything from them (the Tasmanian government). Nothing happened until one of the parents marched into (now Premier) Jeremy Rockliff’s office and demanded help,” a parent says.
“The teachers were well supported but the families were forgotten about.”
The Tasmanian Government said it has provided $500,000 in support directly to the families, including offers of counselling, on top of community fundraisers.
A Launceston company, Taz-Zorb, supplied the inflatables. The same outfit had been hired by the school in 2020 for a similar event.
A parent questioned whether the Tasmanian Education department had adequate rules on jumping castles before the accident.
“The Queensland Education Department has a 12-page document on the use of inflatable equipment,” the grieving parent says.
Was it a freak accident, or could it have been prevented?
Almost a year on, a date for a coronial inquest has yet to be announced. More than 180 people have been interviewed by police. Many of the witnesses were children.
Coroner Olivia McTaggart has the job of getting to the truth of what happened.
The police report has already been handed to her but the WorkSafe investigation is not complete.
Weather experts, engineers and scientists will also be called by the coroner, adding to the submissions already given by those eyewitnesses and the families of the children who never came home on December 16, 2021.
Lawyers will pour over the meanings of words like negligence, insurers will run their comb over them too.
There’s likely to be a fight over a $20m public liability insurance policy, which is the standard level for jumping castle operators.
But the families who lost their children won’t care about legal definitions; they will want to know if anything could have been done differently.
Would a simple tether, an extra rope anchor tied to something heavy, or a school risk assessment mean they could have been able to spend Christmas with their kids this year?
Another parent, who agreed to speak for this article but also wanted to remain anonymous, says they want to know whether the jumping castle was tied down adequately.
“If it was strapped to something like a vehicle it would have just bounced around on the ground,” the second parent says.
“They could have tethered it to a car or to a tree. There are so many aspects to this.”
Witnesses on the day described the weather as calm before the unexpected wind gust.
“It was a calm day, there was only 8 or 9km/h wind, it was a beautiful, calm, sunny morning,” the second parent says.
“It was an awesome day, it was just a freak willy willy wind.”
Shockwaves.
That’s how Tasmanian Premier Jeremy Rockliff, who is the local member for Braddon which includes Devonport where the incident happened, describes the fallout.
“It is almost impossible to put into words just how devastating this tragedy was, and continues to be,” Rockliff says.
“There is no doubt this tragedy sent shockwaves through the entire nation, with everyone united in their collective grief for what occurred on that tragic day.
“I have met several times with the families of those who tragically lost their lives, and my heart continues to go out to them.
“There is no doubt this tragedy has and will impact them deeply forever, and I know I speak for all Tasmanians in extending my deepest sympathies.”
Peter Gutwein, who was premier of Tasmania at the time of the jumping castle catastrophe, says “the 16th of December will forever be etched in memory”.
“That morning when I was first informed of the tragedy, I recall feeling a kaleidoscope of disbelief, shock, grief and concern for the loss of young life, for those who were now fighting for their lives and for their parents and families,” he says. “My thoughts will forever remain with them.”
Jumping castles are now banned at schools in Tasmania and Western Australia, but thousands of children will be on them at schools and fetes across the rest of the country during this year’s final term.
The name of the school where the incident happened – Hillcrest – was deliberate, it’s on the side of a steep slope.
The school buildings and oval sit on an excavated plateau, the same way a house would be cut into a hillside block.
At the edge of the oval, the ground slopes away towards Lovett St, with large gum trees lining the hillside.
The Australian Government’s Bureau of Meteorology keeps detailed records of the weather.
It recorded a temperature of 17.3 degrees at 9am, with a southerly wind speed of 13km/h.
Those measurements were taken at Devonport Airport, just over 11km away from Hillcrest Primary School.
The maximum wind gust that day at the airport’s weather station was 33km/h at 3pm.
Just exactly how strong the wind was will be a key question for Coroner McTaggart and those weather experts.
What’s not in dispute is that a Crayon Playland jumping castle, which is still on sale in Australia for $3204 from Chinese company East Inflatables, was picked up and blown across the primary school’s oval.
Photographs from the day show a deflated part of the jumping castle in trees on the far side of the oval, towards the Lovett St end of the school on that sloping embankment.
There was chaos afterwards.
How do you prepare, or plan, for something like this?
The inflatable pen for the balls ended up towards the front of the school, near Lawrence Drive, at the opposite side of the oval.
“Immediately, I left Hobart for Devonport to provide whatever support was needed, and to be with a community whose heart was shattered,” Gutwein says.
For parents, there was panic.
No one knew exactly what had happened.
Parents said there was a bulk text message from the school at some time around 11am, or 11.30am, asking for children to be picked up.
“Everyone got a bulk text message, one of the parents was at the school as a parent helper, they only needed to take eight numbers off,” a devastated parent says.
“Parents were in the waiting room for hours not knowing if their child had a broken arm or worse. Most of them were in resuscitation.”
In the desperation to get them to medical treatment, the children had been bundled into ambulances.
Most were not able to speak.
Parents say that no one knew the children’s names.
“There was absolute chaos. All the children arrived at the emergency department unidentified,” the second parent says.
“There were hysterical parents in the waiting room.
“A nurse had to beg a teacher to come to the hospital to identify them.”
Georgie Gardam raced to the school when she had a phone call about the news from her former partner.
She was told her son Zane, 12, had been taken to the Latrobe hospital in Launceston.
But he never left the school.
“I didn’t get to be with my son when he died and I didn’t see him for three days after because he got sent straight to the coroner’s,” she told the ABC in February.
“People think that these kids just fell out of a jumping castle. These kids were beaten up, Zane did not look like himself.
“Zane was absolutely broken. That’s all I can say. He didn’t look like himself.”
Gardam declined to be interviewed, saying she would wait until after the coronial inquest to make a statement.
The smiling faces of those children killed and injured, many from their school photographs, were beamed around the world.
An image of two police officers, both wearing sunglasses, in front of a playground at the school on the day of the incident captured the grief.
They couldn’t hide their distress at the scene.
Seeing two police officers, in full uniform with high-vis vests, so overcome with emotion underlined the tragedy.
A sea of flowers was laid along Lawrence St in front of the school’s entrance.
“When I reflect on this tragedy my first thoughts are for the young lives lost and their grieving families and for those injured and still recovering,” Gutwein says.
“I also recognise the courage and bravery of the school community and the first responders who attended and who undoubtedly will never erase the memory of what confronted them.”
More than $1.4m was raised through a GoFundMe page by local woman Zoe Smith.
It took about four months for the money to be distributed to families, which was complicated by legal issues.
“Some of the families … it was complicated, there were (parents) who claimed they were entitled to the money,” a parent says.
“The money took four or five months to come through.”
A parent claimed Smith received “threats” from some people in the community even though she was just trying to help.
Smith did not respond to requests for comment. Some of the families engaged lawyers. There were many approaches – some were trying to organise a class action.
“We thought the public turned on us, we were called money hungry – there were comments on social media,” the first parent says.
“When children have been killed and people put that online, it’s pitiful.”
No claims have been filed yet, they are likely to happen after Coroner McTaggart makes her findings.
There was hope that the inquest – all six deaths will be examined at the same time – may have started in September.
But when asked for an update, the Tasmanian Coroner’s office referred to a statement from June 9, 2022, which said: “Unfortunately, it is very difficult to provide precise time frames for completion of the investigation.”
What the parents who spoke to us want to know is how did this happen?
The jumping castle operator, Taz-Zorb, was contacted for comment but did not return calls.
A list of 10 questions was sent to the company in a detailed text message, seeking the owner’s side of the story.
The main questions were: “Was the Crayon Playland jumping castle tethered to a trailer, tree or building? Did you apologise, or send condolences to the parents of those who lost children? Did (Taz-Zorb) have wind monitoring equipment? Did the jumping castle used on that day meet Australian standards?”
The following day, the company’s lawyer called and explained they could not answer any questions before the inquest.
There was no sign of any jumping castle equipment at the business site this month.
The business was still registered with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, however, the jumping castle industry has been all but shut down in Tasmania.
The Education Department in Tasmania banned the use of inflatables the day after the tragedy in a memo to all schools.
Jumping castle operators were closed across the state. Without schools, the business model was busted.
And insurance companies who would previously offer $20m public liability insurance cut that in half. The premiums tripled.
“No one has been able to work since then because the schools banned them,” an operator, who spoke on condition of anonymity, says.
The operator was working on December 16 last year at another school in Tasmania.
“An email was sent around on the day for all jumping castles to stop,” the operator says.
“The principal came up and told us to deflate them – there had been an accident.”
The wind was calm where that operator was working that day.
Experienced operators can pick the wind, there’s a document in the trade called the Beaufort scale of wind force.
A “Force 4” or moderate breeze “raises dust and loose paper. Small branches are moved.”
That’s between 19km/h and 28km/h winds.
Some operators use that as a marker to stop and pull down an inflatable.
A “Force 5” is described as small trees in leaf begin to sway at between 28km/h and 38km/h.
That’s the range that includes the official recorded maximum wind of 33km/h that day at Devonport.
The question of just how the jumping castle was tied down will be key for the coroner.
East Inflatables still had one in stock in its Sydney warehouse this month.
Candy, a staff member at its office in Nanjing, three hours’ drive west of Shanghai, China, confirmed the product was still available.
Candy, who only gave her first name but spoke in English, said Australian authorities had not contacted the company.
“Meets Australian standards, no worries mate,” she said.
WorkSafe Tasmania says it is still working on its investigation.
“All relevant lines of inquiry are being pursued using the functions and powers available to the Regulator and inspectors under the Work Health and Safety Act 2012,” a statement said.
“When finalised, the investigation report
will be provided to the Regulator and the Director of Public Prosecutions so a decision can be made on whether any party should be prosecuted for breaches of the Act.”
Tasmania Police confirmed that its report has been given to Coroner McTaggart.
“Tasmania Police have interviewed numerous people as part of the investigation into the Hillcrest tragedy,” a statement said.
“These have included interviews from adults and children who were witnesses, personnel from a variety of emergency services and statements from investigators.
“The coroner has been provided with over 180 statements.”
Police drafted in specialists from New South Wales to interview the children who were witnesses.
They spent three days in Tasmania doing those difficult conversations.
Devonport City Council has set up a committee to help with the recovery from the incident.
There were plans for a memorial but no decisions have been made yet.
For the parents, the memorial can wait.
They will never be able to move on, but they say they need answers.
Was it a freak accident, or a massive mistake that could result in formal legal action?
That’s what Coroner McTaggart and the prosecutor’s office will have to decide.
Originally published as Final photograph of Tasmanian jumping castle reveals crucial clue
O’Byrne pulls plug on support for Ferguson, says Premier must act
The survival of key Liberal Michael Ferguson hangs by a thread after key independent David O’Byrne declared he had lost confidence in the beleaguered Treasurer and Deputy Premier. What Mr O’Byrne said >>
Read more
World-leading program which has reduced dementia risk by 25%
A five-year dementia study run out of UTAS is showing drops of 25 per cent in the dementia risk of its study participants. Here is what they are doing to stay healthier for longer.
Read more