‘My life’s finished. I’m just stuck here now’

Graeme Lake took wife Karla on a cruise for her birthday. He never imagined it would end with her dying in bed beside him.

Graeme Lake and his wife Carla, who died after contracting Covid-19 on the Ruby Princess. Picture: Glenn Hunt

“I’m still angry. And I think I’ll be angry for a long time.”

Graeme Lake took his wife Karla on the Ruby Princess for her 75th birthday. Within 24 hours of disembarking in Sydney, Mrs Lake was in a Queensland hospital struggling to breathe with COVID-19.

Mr Lake fell ill days later and joined her in isolation in the same room. When she died on the bed beside him, life as he knew it ended.

“I’ve got no one to sit down to talk to. I can’t make plans. I’ve got no one to cook for so I don’t eat properly. I don’t go places,” he said from his retirement village north of Brisbane on Friday.

“My life’s finished, I’m just stuck here now. And there’s a lot of families out there in the same predicament as me.”

Mr Lake, 72, spoke to the Ruby Princess inquiry via video link for 45 minutes. The Vietnam veteran had experienced first-hand the ­ineptitude of NSW Health.

“I was out of hospital. My wife had passed away four or five days previously and they rang me up to ask whether my wife and I were still self-isolating,” he said.

Graeme Lake and his wife Carla. Picture: Glenn Hunt

“That was the last time they spoke to me. I told them to f..k off and get their facts worked out.”

He says if individuals aren’t personally held responsible, whether from the government or cruise ship, the inquiry will be worthless.

“If they’re wrong, tell them. Otherwise nothing will happen and a week after it will get back to the same old normal thing again.  “As far as the Ruby Princess goes, I think it was the doctor and the captain. They are to blame completely on the ship side of it.

“When it comes to the NSW government, where do you start?

“We don’t want to blame people for the sake of blaming them. We’ve got to be fair to everyone. But the people who deserve to get a kick in the arse, should.”

The Lakes had been on more than 20 cruises together. They had no inkling anyone on board was sick, and this is what occupies his mind the most.

“I’m old fashioned. I believe when a man takes his family on a holiday or when he takes them out in the car, his responsibility is to look after them and bring them home in one piece,” Mr Lake said.

“Well I didn’t do that, I failed badly — that’s how you feel.

“I still took her away, she’s smiling, she’s happy, she’s enjoying herself, she’s relying on me to do everything for her, which I’ve been doing for the last few years.

“I was there for her to lean on — but I wasn’t. And I wasn’t for the simple reason that not once did the doctor or the bloody captain come on there and say, ‘Look, we’ve got people sick, do you want to isolate yourself in the cabin or whatever’.

“Because I would have locked her in the cabin that quick — both of us.”

Married for 25 years, they’d gone on the Ruby Princess with two other couples. All four of those friends also fell ill with COVID-19. Everyone had flown back to Queensland, putting family and friends at risk on the way.

It was the first cruise Mr Lake had been on where the captain didn’t show up to a party to shake the hands of guests.

“I believe he knew there was sickness around and he wasn’t coming down to mix with us. Nothing will change my mind without him looking me in the eye and telling me that’s not it.”