In addition to putting the final finishing touches to the new CD material, we announce the release of our first single from the new album. It's called 321 (or 321 hours) and it's a tribute to the bravery of the Beaconsfield miners, Brant Webb and Todd Russell and the tragic death of fellow miner Larry Knight.

At 9:26 pm (Australian Eastern Standard Time) on April 25, 2006, a seismic event triggered an underground rock fall at the Beaconsfield gold mine in northern Tasmania. Three of the miners working underground at the time were trapped, and early reports suggested that 14 miners who were underground at the time had managed to scramble to safety. The mining company, Beaconsfield Gold Mine Joint Venture, released a press statement saying they held "grave concerns for [the three miners] wellbeing". Larry Knight (44), Brant Webb (37) and Todd Russell (34), were the three miners who remained unaccounted for. Knight had been killed in the initial rock fall, but Webb and Russell were still alive, trapped in part of the vehicle in which they had been working at the time of the collapse, known as a tele-loader or tele-handler. On April 26 a remote-controlled earth mover began clearing the rock underground. On the morning of April 27, at 7:22am, the body of one of the miners was found in the shaft. At around 8pm, the body was retrieved and was identified as the body of Larry Paul Knight, 44, of Launceston. He was the driver of the tele-handler. At 5:45 pm on April 30, 2006, Webb and Russell were found alive after being trapped underground for five days. They were detected by thermal imaging cameras and a microphone. After a mammoth rescue effort, Brant Webb was freed at 4:47am on May 9, followed by Todd Russell at 4:54 am. They had been trapped underground for a total of 321 hours or nearly 2 weeks! To read more of this amazing story of survival that captured the attention of Australia and indeed the rest of the world, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaconsfield_mine_collapse.

After reading and hearing about the miners plight, Mark and Sean wrote a song about their experience being trapped underground. Mark then, true to form, contacted Brant Webb and told him about the song and sent him an mp3 to listen to for approval. Over the course of a few months, Mark and Brant became friends and conversed regularly with each other about music, fishing and anything else that interested them. This culminated in the guys singing backing vocals on the final two choruses of the song while they were in Adelaide in March for the Clipsal 500 V8 Supercar race. Not content to leave it at that, Mark suggested that Unitopia could perform the song live in Beaconsfield on the anniversary of their escape.

The West Tamar Council team co-ordinated by Kerry McCormick (thanks Kerry!) together with Brant Webb and Todd Russell organised an evening of celebration and memorial on May 9th 2007. Sharing the musical portion of the evening were Troy Cassar-Daley, performing a well loved selection of his Aussie country-rock repertoire and Unitopia. We performed an hour long set, starting with '321' and culminated with an encore performance of the song with Brant, Brant's wife Rachel and Todd joining us on stage to sing some back-up vocals! With 50% of the proceeds going to the Webb/Russell Legacy, the CD Single and limited edition T-Shirts sold like hot cakes! The entire show as well as the tour was videoed by Scott Arnold, (Cheers Scottie!) and we'll hopefully have some footage on the site shortly! Many thanks to all involved! We had a great time and hope to visit Beaconsfield again very soon!