Dave Not Coming Back (2020) - full transcript

[percussive music playing]

[Don] On the 28th of October in 2004,

David planned to do a deep dive.

A 270, 280 dive.

I've got two legs, obviously.

Disgusting. We're gonna get a look at.

'Cause no one's ever done that.

No one's ever been to those sort of depths,

taking a reel out,

caving like he would cave at 12 meters,

but now at 200 plus meters.

Yes, I promise.

[Don] It'd take Dave 17 minutes to reach the bottom,

but 12 hours to surface.

When I recall the dive, I recall mainly how smoothly the whole thing went.

The preparation early on in the morning went smoothly, getting up.

[Dave] I had no expectation of breakig the world record for depth.

The aim was to explore.

But then again, as soon as I got to the bottom, I headed off deeper.

When I looked across to the left,

that's when I saw the-- the body that had been lost 10 years earlier.

[Dave] I had no doubt, is it or isn't the body.

[Don] And when I met Dave,

we both knew that we was going to go back and pick that body up.

The question only was when.

[man] So how are you feeling now, Dave?

Yeah, I'm all right. I got-- got started to get cold in the last hour,

but up until the last hour, the time really went quite quickly.

Sort of, you know, one half hour after the next.

[chuckling]

[Peter] Don SMSed me.

He says, "Dave went to 270, found body."

And my next SMS back was "When do we fetch it?"

[Derek] The moment Dave said that he would come back,

I knew it was something I wanted to be part of.

It wasn't a decision of am I going to do it or not.

It was, as a team, when are we going to do it.

I was excited by it because of the challenge of it,

the technical challenge of it, like how would you retrieve a body from 260 meters?

[cameraman] Something that extreme,

there's a body that's been lyig at a depth of 265 meters for 10 years,

let's film this thing, let's tell a nice story of thi.

In everyone's mind, it was goig to go ahead as it was intended.

I don't think anyone anticipatd that it wouldn't end up like that.

[man] Whenever you're ready, Don.

[chuckling] Okay. All right.

[Don] Because we've been doing a lot of the filmin,

when I do things I've been thinking about in terms of a film,

if you talk about driving, if you take a race driver,

he actually becomes part of that machine

and can do things with that machine that you woud never, ever dream possible.

When it comes to diving, it's exactly the same.

There's a few times where I've put my hood on,

just my hood, right?

So I put the hood over my head, and if you listen to it when I do that,

I actually breathe out as I am putting on. So I go... [exhales]

And the hood goes on, and that's the first part of the dive.

[air escaping]

[Don] Then the rebreather goes on,

and I start to metamorph effectively into that machine.

And when you get in the water, the final part is my mask.

Now, in my mask of my diving mask I've got lenses.

[Don] When I put that mask on,

it's like switching into dive mode, and I'm now part of the water.

Part of the water.

[Don] When you go to Bushman's, you don't expect to find a hole.

Approximately 50 to 60 meters dropping

as you actually go down to where the water is.

There's been a few deaths in Bushman's,

but Deon Dreyer is one that everyone knew about.

Ten years after Deon's death,

Dave found his body by pure chance.

When Dave surfaced, you know,

it was still firmly in his mind he was actually going to go and recover the body.

[Don whispering]

Beautifully assembled.

No regulator. I didn't see where the regulator was.

No doubt, somewhere but...

Yeah, just lying there, all assembled.

It's really fast to do it. No flash, of course.

[Don] Yeah.

Dave was a-- was a spirit that actually wanted to do things, you know.

What happened to my VR3? Did you--

[Don] It's stuck down.

[inaudible] Did you see a problem?

[Don] It's full of water, wet.

[Don] I've never had a brother. I'm an only child. And Dave felt like a brother.

[Don muttering]

[Don] The first time I met Dave,

just seeing him putting the gear together,

it was almost like me putting my gear together.

You alright?

[Dave grunts]

[Don] Same gear, getting ready in the same way I would and checking.

And it was almost like looking in the mirror.

I can do this.

[Don] I can do it.

[Don] We even looked the same.

[Dave] Well, I am swimming for the deep area,

and when I did a sweep to the left, about 32 degrees to the left,

I saw the body,

and my immediate reaction was "That's the end of the deep dive,

I now need to go across to the body."

Right now, I'm under water.

-[laughter] -What are you doing down there?

[laughter]

[Don] It's not what you think.

[Dave] Well, enema was coming to mind.

[Don] I was very, very involved with teaching.

I contacted the most accomplished of my guys,

guys I trained and said,

"Look, do you want to come and help? Can you help? Are you prepared to?"

Stephen was already an incredibly accomplished diver.

Peter was just about one of the first guys I met, big and bold Peter.

Mark and Dusan would always, always dive together.

Truwin and Petrus Roux were being trained at the same time.

Lo was the first guy that I actually taught,

really coldest part of the winter, and he loved it.

As far as Andre goes, we've got almost like a mental connection,

so she's my last and first contact when I get out of the water

so I'm not missing for days, and then people suddenly realize I'm not there, so.

When you have a person in front of you, and they're learning,

you see the insecurities and the overcompensation here and there.

You see their souls.

I never, ever trained Dave in the water.

With Dave coming up, I've got someone that I could actually go and dive with.

[Don] Dave was trying to make a documentary over the process.

It would have been an amazing thing to actually film underwater,

tell people why we did what we did.

[Don] Yeah, why do we-- Dave, why do we use the water?

[Dave] I don't know, man.

[Derek] Don spoke to me

and said that there was some thought with him and Dave

about filming a documentary.

That made the trip even more interesting for me,

because that was an active role, potentially forming a little piece of history.

No one's ever recovered a body from that sort of depth.

[man] Dave, everything go according to plan?

Yeah, it was a very good dive, actually. I actually enjoyed it.

And we dropped off some tanks on the way down,

and then I went down to the bottom.

[Dave] Well, I had a purpose as well.

[Don] I've heard stories about Bushman's.

I've heard the legends behind Bushman's.

I've heard of Deon Dreyer disappearing at Bushman's.

I've seen hand-sketched drawins in training manuals of Bushman's.

Verna did a 220-meter women's world record dive there.

Bushman's was the place to be.

Now, we had a full-on body recovery process in action.

Once all the divers were confirmed, we settled the date: 8th of January, 2005.

We booked a whole week prior to that day to set up the dive.

[Peter] The contrast of sitting on the top,

and there's a little pond with three frogs and a half dead animal in it.

And you go under the water, and this thing goes, you know, just...

It's like a church, it's like a cathedral underwater.

[Don] Part of the danger, the absolue danger of Bushman's,

is the ease of which you can actually get depth.

And it just keeps on going.

So that, literally, effectivel, you could say there is no bottom to the place.

And the only way that you've gt out is a very thin line.

Below you is at least 200 meters of water.

My dive plan:

first off, Dave goes down,

we just set the time of the dive, the time D.

I follow Dave at D plus 13.

I meet him.

I take the body, and hand it over to the next diver,

who hands it over to the next one.

All of the divers had to be at a place at a time.

The problem with so many divers doing, in their own right, very serious dives,

is that there is high potential for a problem.

[machine whirring]

[Don] Everything you do at Bushman's is amplified,

in terms of logistical problems you actually got.

We have to literally take everything,

all of the compressors, all of the mixing systems.

It's like moving a whole dive shop to the site.

Then, of course, all your divig gear has got to get to the bottom.

[Don] I've got some 35 cylinders to get in the water.

You can see some of them piled up down there.

That's by no means the-- the total.

There's a few more to come down here. That's quite a dive. [chuckles]

And now this one.

[Verna] Don and Dave created sort of the perfect combination of people.

You know, Don with these solid, solid technical skills,

with hours and hours in the water,

and then we had Dave who had this desire to explore and--

Someone going to 150 meters needs to pick up that tank and take it down to 150 meters.

[Dusan] That'll be Mark and I.

It'll be-- or Lo. It'll be--

It'll have my name on it with the red band around the bottom.

Okay.

[Jack] I was fairly young doctor at that stage.

Initially, I definitely thought this was crazy

and I was definitely quite excited to be involved.

This was something totally new.

We tend to first do no harm, do the good--

lower the risk, save lives, etc.,

while many divers are actually pushing boundarie,

getting new limits.

And-- and to get the balance between those two viewpoints, it's--

It takes discussion, it takes compromise on both sides.

[man] Happy with the progress so far, dude?

Yeah, it's been very slow this morning,

but being a preparation day, it's sort of to be expected.

It's good to get all the glitches

and the where's this and the where's that out of the way on a relaxed day,

rather than panic on a big day.

So I regard the whole thing as being very normal, so.

[whirring]

[man] Dave, please.

[man] One action to record it, one action to switch off record.

-It's a very small movement, isn't it? -[man] Yeah, yeah.

[Dave] What I'm going to do is I'm going to set it going before --

[Derek] Gordon and myself had suggested

possibly doing an underwater camera to go with him,

and when the idea was put to him, he jumped at it.

We always say in technical diving circles

that you don't change your equipment setup

when you're doing a significant dive.

Dave wasn't used to diving with a helmet, and for this dive,

he not only wore a helmet,

but he wore a helmet with a fairly bulky housing and camera on top of it.

Not a problem.

[Derek] It-- It-- You know, it plays on my mind sometimes, you know,

was the desire to document the whole dive

partly responsible for what happened?

That makes those feelings of guilt a real issue.

[cameraman] Dave was two or three different people.

I only knew one and a half of those maybe.

He was intended to retire at 5.

We were both in a sort of a transition point

where we could have actually gone off and really kicked our heels up.

Now for the film, Dave would want that story told the way that I want the story told.

What I've always tried to do is to give the true information of what went on.

[Don] By re-enacting,

it really took me back to the time when I was actually there.

I'll dive and re-enact my scenes. I'll play myself.

You play the other divers to see if I'm okay. So look at me.

-Yeah. -All right? And then you look at this.

-Yeah. -So you see that, you know,

and I say, "That's dead. That's dead."

-Yeah. -All right?

And then-- and then I'm going to look at this one.

So I'm looking at that, and you may even hold my hand so you can see it and angle it.

-Okay. -Do it nice, okay? Do it proper, okay?

Okay. I'll do. Perfect.

[Don] You have a slate, you give it to me, all right?

You give it to me. I take it, all right?

-And then I'll write "Dave Not Coming Back." -Okay.

All right? And then you're gone. And then you leave. That's it.

Do it without talking, because you can't talk underwater.

[Don] If you're about to go and do a dive,

when you're talking about the serious-style technical dives, anyone can go deep.

We're coming back.

The next bit is how do you come out.

Decompression in itself

is actually managing the gas coming out of your system as you rise.

When you're coming up,

you can form small bubbles in the blood, micro bubbles.

If it manifests in your brain or your spine or your ear,

you face serious injury or even death.

People call decompression illness "the bends."

The only way you can avoid decompression problems is to rise up slowly and stop.

Put specific depths for specific times.

The more time you spend under water,

the deeper you go or a combination of both,

the longer you'll have to stop.

It can go on for hours, especially in the shallow part of the dive.

The 270-meter dive, every minute at that depth gave us an extra hour in the water.

Within an hour, the body gets to the surface,

allowing the divers a few hours to safely decompress.

Decompression is a very key part of it,

but really the most important part is the mind.

[Don] You're not thinking about anything.

Time evaporates.

[Don] Cave diving in its own is

the most calming experience I've ever felt.

We dive because of what's not there.

The void, the silence, the lack of light,

the last frontier, right?

We know more about space than we do about the deep waters.

You're in the cave. You're in the dark.

It's your light and it's yourself. Nothing else.

Sometimes people search in themselves for themselves.

The closer you get to danger, the more you learn about yourself.

It's a free life.

You can do things on your own volition.

If it goes wrong, it's down to you.

[man] Okay. Come, Dave.

[man] Okay, so you can actually start by looking around and saying "I find myself."

I find myself back in this beautiful location in January 2005,

so that we can finally put a closure

to this sad chapter in the Dreyer family's life.

Um, has-- Sorry.

[man] Okay, we can do it again.

I find myself back in this beautiful location

after the previous world record dive, where I discovered Deon Dreyer's body.

[man] So let's start from the beginning.

Okay. Am I the beginning?

Okay. Well, it's just like there's always an issue.

The first time I heard of Bushman's,

Deon and his friends approached us to say,

"Dad, is it okay if I accompany these guys and do their backup"

I said, "My son, I don't have a problem."

That Saturday night, the policeman arrived at the door,

and they said to me "Deon is missing."

But eleven o'clock the next morning, we were there,

where we ran into the problem of seeing that Deon never--

never came up.

You're in two minds at that stage.

Where is he? He's down there.

Where? Down there.

But they can't pinpoint it,

he's 270 odd meters below the water surface.

It is difficult to find closure on that.

Until you have seen, there's always hope.

For virtually 10 years, we get a phone call saying "We've actually found Deon."

-[Dave] How are you? -At last we meet.

-[Dave] Yeah. Glad to see you. -Yeah.

-Glad to see you. -My wife Marie.

Lovely to see you. How was the trip? Had a good trip, did you?

[Theo] Dave Shaw is one of the few people I compare to Deon.

Have you seen the chambers and everything down there?

-I've seen the chambers. Tremendous. -Yeah, it is.

[Theo] The similarities in energy approach, demeanour,

it was actually frightening.

I'm adjusting to it very quickly and I'm starting to expect it on all my other dives.

[laughter]

The impression of somebody sacrificing for your needs,

you know, that--

He tried doing me a favour,

and ended up not coming back,

so that is extremely intense.

Um, for somebody that doesn't experience that,

it-- it just doesn't mean the same.

[man] Okay, so looking around at the-- at the beautiful location. Go.

I find myself in this beautiful location once again, in January 2005

so that I can repeat the world record dive

in an attempt to recover Deon Dreyer's body,

so that the Dreyer family can finally put closure

to this very sad chapter in their lives.

[whistling and yelling]

[man] Okay.

Peter, 20 minutes.

Peter, 20 minutes down to D.

[Verna] These both are oxygen.

[Verna] There were like almost two dives happening.

There was Dave coming up and then there was how the--

the body was going to be handed up.

What is it that I need to start to think about in my head,

what do I need to structure in my head around if this goes wrong?

Please, divers, you got 10 minutes. That means you've got seven.

Yeah.

Don's already gone, and Dusan and Mark have already gone in,

Pete's already gone in. Lo's already gone in.

Now we're waiting for Derek, Steve and the peace guys,

they're going to 20 meters.

We're sitting on 60 minutes at the moment.

They will be-- they've got 10 minutes,

and then they will go in three-minute intervals between them.

[man] This happened right after your record dive.

It's a record that is still...

Yeah, it's-- it's holding now,

so on the 25th of October, so 2017, it'll have held for 13 years.

So I was never expecting it to hold that long.

When I look at how I saw myself when I was doing the diving,

it wasn't even about the world record,

it was actually about being enough just to be me.

Even that means nothing in the real world.

Having a world record means absolutely nothing in the world of corporate.

Nothing. It's an interesting story to tell over drinks on a Friday.

[man mumbling]

Then you got three minutes.

[Verna] So when I look at other deep divers, I always wonder

what is sitting underneath it.

Whether they don't have that sense of something absent in themselves

that is feeding the drive.

[man] So, Dave, how did it go with the camera?

The camera was actually quite good,

apart from the stretchy--

Very impressive bit of gear,

and I'm sure you'll be impressed with my video footage as well.

[man] We'll be the judge of that.

[laughter]

[Peter] And I said to Dave,

"I think it's really great what you're doing for the Dreyers."

He says, "Oh, no, face it, we're doing it for the hell of it."

It was never body recovery; it was a reason to do it.

I think that's what most cave divers need,

is let's see how far this thing goes.

[Ann] About 12 months before he found Deon's body,

he rang me and said,

"I-- I did a dive today, went fairly deep,

broke a world record."

And I thought, "What?"

I had no idea

of the extent to which he was diving.

That suddenly put him out of the league of most people.

And I thought, "What do I do with this?

This is the man that I married.

What do I do with this?"

[Ann] David always wanted to be a pilot.

These pilot log books, it says here,

it's April 28, 1973.

And today is April 28,

45 years later, that was our first date.

He rang and asked me if I wanted to go flying with him, and I said yes.

But deep down I'm thinking, "Oh, this is so scary."

But I scarcely took my eyes off the instrument panel.

Somehow, I thought if I just watched them, everything would keep working.

I was praying an awful lot, you know, "God, keep us safe."

We were pretty young, 17 and 18, but yeah.

Diving, that was quite a recent hobby,

and only ever a hobby.

When I discovered Deon on my last world record dive, he was lying on his back,

um, out flat, with his arms floating.

The part of the body that I could see had no flesh on it.

It was just bone.

[Ann] We planned together

how he would get a skeleton in a wetsuit back to the surface.

They don't sell these sort of body bags in the supermarke.

So I made up this bag.

[Dave] Once I reach Deon, I'll release these quick-- quick action straps.

So there's four of them. One,

two,

three,

and the fourth one.

And once he's out of his gear,

I'll continue rolling the bag up.

One very quick action, pull on that, and he's sealed inside the bag.

It sounds quite simple.

At 270 meters, it is quite a task.

Okay, so that'll be where you're positioned.

Okay, let me just get this.

So through here I can see your hands.

Move your hands around a bit like you're--

-you're doing stuff. -Like that?

[Ann] David used to practice sometimes on the floor in the lounge room.

I had to be part of this practice.

I wasn't too keen on being put in a body bag but...

Yeah, I can see both hands from the elbow on the right hand right through to the fingers.

[man] Do you think you can manage that, Dave?

[Dave] Well, I need to have the thing on top of my head first to see what it feels lik.

Yeah, there's-- there's just a lot of memories,

some actually really quite painful memories in this box,

um, but precious memories.

Memories I don't want to get rid of, I can't get rid of.

Um...

And for some reason, I just allowed all this to happen.

But I couldn't ask him.

I couldn't ask him to stop doing what, obviously,

gave him so much pleasure.

So, I don't know, Dave, I think we really like [inaudible].

-[Dave] Yeah. -Okay. Uh...

I think one of us-- most of us trained--

most of us trained for something like this for the--

for the experience and shit like that,

and it's really naturally a little honour to dive with-- not with you, with him.

[laughter]

I think-- I think it's been a bloody nice group though.

[inaudible]

[laughter]

What are your concerns? Do you have any questions?

If you do fall behind scared, do we just go deeper

and go and check up on you or do we wait 'till we're dizzy?

Nothing past the whole program.

So as long as you're just going, don't go past the program?

-[both] Yeah. -That's all.

Yeah, so 150-meter divers, you are 150-meter divers. Full stop.

If Dave doesn't come back on time--

-[Verna] You're gonna come down. -Obviously I'm coming on down to pick up Dave

or do whatever I've got to do and then come back up.

If someone had a problem,

then the body becomes secondary.

So a living diver is more important than a dead diver.

So that was really the order of preference.

Really-- really must emphasize

that the most important person on the dive is you, okay?

It's not me.

For me, the most important on the dive is me, okay?

You must look after yourselves.

So if you have a problem, you deal with your problem and forget about me.

It cannot be any other way, okay?

It's better to have one person dead than two, okay? It's as simple as that.

[man] Yeah, as simple as that.

[Don] Okay? If Dave doesn't make it,

if I don't make it, we stay there, end of the story.

-That's a given. -[Don] End of story. We don't want to be recovered.

It's not an issue.

[Don] Both I and Dave said if we died on this,

I'm not interested in you pulling our body out,

anybody risking their life to pull our body out,

which seems a contradiction in what we're actually doing.

[Don] Any diver on that trip could have actually turned roud at any point,

even if it was just before he was getting in the water

and said, "I can't do it."

The safest thing that a diver can do on a dive is not dive.

[Don] A lot of diving incidents,

the people that died in those incidents die within 20 minutes

of actually starting the activity they're doing.

When you look at it, in 20 minutes time,

from the peak of life,

you're not there anymore.

The secret of a happy dive is a warm dive.

[people muttering]

-[man] This is Dave. -[man] Stop, stop, Dave. Stop.

[inaudible]

[Don] I was ahead of Dave.

He was extremely focused when he came past me.

I almost wondered a few times

if he really noticed that I was there

and seeing his lights slowly disappear into the depths.

[man] I wasn't really paying much attention to what was goig on around me.

Being calm and-- and getting my breathing right,

just waiting for the 13 odd minutes to pass.

You've got 30 seconds, there.

[Don] Diving Bushman's itself is quite an event.

The drop,

the serene drop,

the plan come together.

When I look back on it now, what was the key point?

Going in the water.

All you see is a line to infinity.

Once you've lost that line, there is nothing else.

I'm looking forward to seeing Dave picking the body up.

Now I'm accumulating speed.

Now I'm on the true, true descent.

[laughing]

I'm strong.

Body's taking a bit of stress but, yeah,

I think the subconscious is probably blocking it out a little bit.

But, yeah, we're just praying for Dave and praying that everything goes well.

[Don] As I was dropping, everything was in tune, it was perfect.

As Dave would ascend, he would make bubbles,

but I didn't see that.

Is Dave moving? Is there anything happening? No movement.

Okay, well, that's me. I'm on the way all the way.

[cracking]

[Don] And then I heard a crack.

I looked at my wrist, a criticl piece of equipment had broken under pressure.

I stopped.

I could see Dave's line.

I can see it still in my mind now.

Slightly forward of where I was and exactly where I would think he would be.

But I had nothing else I could do but ascend.

[Verna] Peace, time is five minutes.

-[man] How much, five? -[Verna] Five minutes.

[man] It's interesting to think that the actual work is almost all over.

Yes, the actual work is all over. He should be at 115.

-[man] Yeah. -At this stage.

[man] And-- but it's only in about 11 hours' time Dave comes out.

Yes.

[chattering]

I can't see that people do this to themselves.

It's difficult to comprehend.

[Verna] Three minutes.

[Mark] We got to 150 meters.

[Dusan] The weight started.

[Mark] It's like being on the back of the Moon.

[Mark] After two minutes, we started to see a light.

And Dusan and I, we looked at each other.

We knew exactly what we were thinking.

There's only one light.

Who is it? Is it Dave or is it Don?

I have to say, at the time,

I haven't said this before, we spoke about it often.

Well, we opted to be done.

[Mark] Six minutes were up.

There's no debating. You know you have to go.

[Dusan] We'd agreed as a group, don't be hero.

Somebody's in trouble, they need to sort themselves out.

[Mark] And when we got 200 meters,

we met the next diver.

And I remember writing on a slate, one light below,

not sure if it's a DoD, Dave or Don,

and immediately you can see it in their eyes was, "Oh, no."

Um, Peter is still down there. Um...

Based on the slate, the message said

that they could see one light below and that was all.

So I'm just going to check to do [inaudible]. So I'll let you know.

-You've read the slate? -Yes.

Okay. No Don or Dave. Um...

[inaudible]

-I could-- -Go-- go to 150 now and wait.

And we're going to have to wait for more comms now. So--

How much have you got?

Not a lot, but I'm-- I can do another dive to 40.

So--

[man] Don't fletch.

It's purely speculation. What I suspect I saw was Steve on his way up from 100,

-and Lo on his way up to 150. -Peter was already above you?

Not Steve, sorry. Peter.

Peter on his way up. Lo on his way up.

Where is Steve?

-I haven't seen him at all. -[man] Steve is under. Steve is under.

Steve is under. So, we've got seven bodies under water.

[Stephen] Don asked me

if I would fill the role of multi-purpose.

I would meet Don at 80 meters.

The first thing I do, if I'm a backup diver

and I'm supposed to meet the diver to depth, is I look at their eyes.

Eyes tell a big story.

And, in their eyes, I could see-- I could see something.

So I started looking at the gauges.

[Stephen] I saw the depth that Don had gone down to.

I knew there was a problem.

Everything seemed normal,

but I anticipated that him plummeting to that depth, that it could be a problem.

At the depth he's been at, something could happen.

Yeah.

Yeah, this is what Don write here.

This is what Don write.

Hmm.

Yeah, this is the slate Don brought up.

You know the reality hits you and you know Dave's gone immediately.

I mean, at that depth, at that time,

there's no way he's-- he's coming back.

One doesn't get emotional at that point because there's another diver in the water.

So you sort of say, "Okay, Dave's gone, now it's Don."

We got to the inside.

[Verna] Okay.

[Stephen] Yeah, Don is okay. Dave...

-Don is all right. -Don is okay.

-[Verna] Dave is not coming back. -Dave is not coming back.

-I need to get on the radio. -[Stephen] Yeah.

[Verna] Okay, we're okay. Don is okay. So, Don's okay.

He's at 80 meters.

You good? Will take five minutes.

We are not going to get there.

I was thinking of sending the slate up by-- with a buoy,

but then it could it-- it could drift from the main line, people could miss it.

I needed to make sure that I took the slate personally

and gave it to the surface water.

[Stephen] I was reasonably sure that Dave wasn't coming back, but I still had a hope.

But what I didn't want was anyone else actually going further down.

I really did not want anyone to go past me

on their own protection.

We're thinking of Dave on the bottom,

but we got divers strung all through the water comm.

All needing support.

Even on the surface, people were saying, "Maybe. Maybe."

On a dive like this, you have hope,

but you know it's not going to happen.

Thanks.

[Don] Two hours into the dive, I was back up to about 46 metes where there was cylinders.

I took one of those cylinders, and clipped it off.

I should have taken two, but I left my other one.

If Dave was coming back, if he was coming back,

just settle that thought in my mind,

he would need everything he could get at that point.

As I did that,

I felt myself losing consciousness.

I am now in a washing machine.

I am spinning.

Spinning, I'm not aware of where I am,

not aware that I'm in Bushman's, not aware I'm on a dive,

not aware that I'm a human, not aware that I'm even on this planet.

Just running on complete mental "Where am I?"

It's sort of a thought in my mind.

No-- I wouldn't be able to pin it

other than this is some dream somewhere where I'm actually--

this is happening, but I can't really remember what it is.

I've got some sort of basic fel that there is a line.

I catch the line.

If I hadn't have caught that line,

I'd have spun, or have just dropped, that would have been the end.

I must go down,

otherwise I'm going to have a really serious decompression problem,

not that I didn't really have a serious decompression problem at that time.

I must pick up the other cylinder.

When I picked up the cylinder,

I started to vomit.

Just the act of picking that cylinder up made me vomit.

I think at that time I started about 10 hours to go.

[man] I got pretty low.

Yeah.

It's me, all right.

-Can I just get these off? -[man] Yes, you can.

[Verna] We are gonna go up to the--

[Jack] Everybody is all right.

Don seems to be okay.

[Verna] I'm tuning right now and checking in.

Okay.

I have no idea what happened. The only thing that I know is that he wasn't there.

You don't say.

It's not what any of us wanted.

[Lo] No, obviously not.

[Truwin] This was for the first time I'd gone down in the dive.

And I think there was a bit of apprehension

that "Am I going to find Don there?"

He was holding the line like this

and you could see the rebreather pipes above his head

like that, with the mouthpiece closed.

And you could just see the bubbles.

I saw him taking the regulator out of his mouth and spitting.

[spitting] And then I knew he had thrown up.

[inaudible]

[Jack] Don was bent,

and it's basically a problem of your inner ear where your balance is--

is regulated and he was, in fact, going deeper.

And then I knew that this was a serious case.

Yeah, yeah.

[Verna] It became really, really complicated really, really quickly.

We needed continuous support.

Not a problem. I'll just need to change the slate. Truwin hasn't gone yet.

If he didn't have somebody, it wouldn't be difficult for us

to lose him completely.

Truwin, if you need something, come back.

[Verna] It was busy.

I don't think I've ever been that busy trying to track people,

where is he, how long have you been in, how long have you been out,

how much air have you got, well, how can we do this in the next ways.

Okay, so you need to give me your current depth and its D per time.

I've put it. I took Stephen.

[Verna] We're going to help people as well.

[man] What-- what does that mean?

[inaudible]. And then let us know.

[Truwin] I don't know how I could let you know.

[Lo] Verna said Truwin must go back in the water because we needed to get Don out.

So we said okay, that's fine.

I mean we have to dive, we have to dive, that's it.

And that's what we did.

[Verna] He needs to tell you what that time is, okay?

So I need from you to keep track on a separate slate.

How deep he is and what is his D per time. That's all I can say.

So, current...

[Truwin] The instinct with vomiting in water is to actually breathe in.

You vomit and it's in the regulator, and then you breathe it straight in.

No, still vomiting.

Vomited just once while I was there.

[Jack] Did anything come out?

[Verna] There was still this thing in the air

that people didn't quite want to give up on-- on Dave.

Getting confirmation that nobody had seen or heard from Dave

allowed, I think, the rest of the support divers

to move on and focus on the diver that we had, which was Don.

[Don] Every diver that came,

I could almost feel the fact that they were trying to assist.

There's nothing they can do.

No one can breathe for you. No one can swim for you.

In the end, I couldn't breathe.

The muscles didn't have enough energy left to actually suck the gas down.

The only way I could breathe ws actually push the purge button to force the gas in.

In a very restful situation,

my normal breathing would be somewhere four or five breaths a minute.

Thinking back, I probably slowd my breathing down

just because it was so awkward to breathe.

Life revolved around, "Okay, I need to breathe now, let's push the button."

Exploding case of these things that we said was going to explode. Same thing.

Yeah, thing is pricy but more chances of it still falling back here.

[laughter]

[Truwin] Just write on the slate for Don as well

that if possible he wants for it to be short marked.

Okay, will do.

[Jack] Verna, for the better part of eight hours,

ran us a show impromptu keeping Don safe,

and she did it perfectly.

Pain? No.

-[man] Vertigo is okay -[man] That's cool.

-[man] He still hears. So it's been better. -[man] Lovely.

[Verna] Still vomiting, does not want new rebreather or diluent.

-He's fine. He's fine. That's-- -[Verna] Steve wants--

[man] That's good.

[Verna] To have the bend that he had at the depth that he had

and to have managed it as well as he did

says a lot about who he is as a diver.

Doing absolutely what has to be done in order to survive and not giving up.

[chatter over radio]

[doctor] It's all sorted. The airway bag will be going up with him.

It's the blue bag that will be attached to the oxygen.

[man over radio] Thank you very much.

[man over radio] Truwin, we need to go.

Okay, we're going. Truwin, go.

[man] Obviously, we need to go.

[Verna] Lodge out of the surface.

[man] Inflate his BC.

-[man] Yeah. -[man] They'll do it. They'll do it.

-[man] Open this. -[man] Got you. Got you.

[talking over each other]

[man] Listen to Donnie. And I've got it. Listen to Donnie.

Okay?

[Verna] Okay, he's away. I'm-- I'm hanging up.

-[man] Stop. -[man] Stop.

-Hang on. -[man] What's up?

So everything was okay until, you know,

when I got him over that edge and I--

and I looked at him and I thought of, oh, fuck, you know, this is bad.

[man] Yeah, he's got to stand [inaudible].

[talking over each other]

[man] Okay, mouth open.

[man] It's on it. It's on it.

-[man] He's gonna do okay. -[man] You okay with that?

Yeah. It tickles, I think.

[man] Okay.

-[man] You happy with it? -[Don] Yeah.

[man] You are going to change regularly--

[Verna] Andre has been sending lots of messages.

She loves you and she's expecting to see you soon.

-[Don] Mmm. -[man] We're getting up the sign from upstairs.

[Andre] People that had phoned me all the time

were reassuring me that he was fine, he was fine, you know, he'll be fine.

But when I saw him, I had quite a bit of a shock, because he wasn't fine.

[Andre] His eyes were going like all directions.

He couldn't focus on somebody like he would focus.

They were just all over the place.

I wasn't that confident that he would get to actually dive again.

If he couldn't dive, then what-- what's he going to do with his life?

[Andre] Are you alright?

Yeah. I couldn't breathe at all.

-[Andre] So it is-- -It took two people to pull.

[Stephen] Don's okay.

- Don is all right. - Don is okay.

- Dave is not coming back. - Dave is not coming back.

[Verna] I need to get on the radio.

[Verna] We're okay.

It even brings a tear to my eye now.

And goose bumps. Yeah. I--

[Don] I do want this film to be made.

We wanted to make a film of ths before the dive even happened, and even more so now.

Most of us didn't see each other again.

And I think that's left an open-ended story for many of us.

[Dave] It's not me. For me, the most important on the dive is me, okay?

You must look after yourselves. So if you have a problem, you deal with--

[Ann] David had arranged, if anything happened to him,

the minister of our church woud come and tell me.

I just felt like I'd fallen off the edge of the universe and God wasn't there.

Where do you go from here? Who do you tell? How do you tell?

[people singing] ♪ Amazing grace ♪

♪ How sweet the sound ♪

♪ That saved ♪

♪ A wretch like me ♪

♪ I once was lost ♪

♪ But now I am found ♪

♪ Was blind ♪

♪ But now I see ♪

[Peter] We still had tanks at 150 meters.

The idea was to then go in on Wednesday morning

and get them out so that we leave the hole the way we found it, clean.

[Petrus] Peter phoned me and told me,

"Listen, there's been an accident,"

and can I come down to help him because all the other people are left.

[speaking in foreign language]

[Petrus] I had to abort three times before the dive.

And usually they say

if the third thing goes wrong, quit the dive, but I didn't.

And I can-- and-- and now I can tell you

the pressure that was on Dave to do that dive

may be that same pressure was on me.

How would I know? I don't know.

[man] Just a moment. Just a moment.

[Peter] Petrus was in front of me.

I looked behind Petrus and I saw a line going up,

and I couldn't figure out what the hell that line was

because there shouldn't be a second line in the water.

[Petrus] The rope is going by itself, starting to pull me up.

So I just roll over and let the rope go.

Because we started pulling, it came loose, and Dave just start floating up.

Peter went in ahead of me, and he shined on the bodies.

It's bodies, it's definitely them. I couldn't believe it.

He saw Dave

on the roof with Deon,

he said suspended,

hanging below him,

and the only thing holding Deon on to Dave was Dave's torch.

Literally just the-- the umbilical cord of the torch.

And the cave line was just one wrap.

Just one wrap around the Goodman Handle.

[Petrus] I took out Deon's body, hanging from a very thin cave line,

so I must be very careful not to drop him.

[Peter] I started getting panicky.

I said to him "Let me take the body up. I'm going up in any case."

Then I came up through this lift.

[Peter] When I saw Dave, I know I mustn't look in his face...

But it was unavoidable.

At one stage, he was like right into my face.

Maybe the Holy Spirit just take over of my body completely and tell me,

"Listen, just do this and get it over with.

You have to do it. There's nobody else to do it."

I was just focusing on the camera on top of his head,

because that will tell what happened to him.

[men muttering]

[coughing]

[Ann] I got a call from Peter, and I was absolutely horrified.

I was so distraught I couldn't tell anyone else.

The unfortunate thing

then meant that everybody found out from the press

that David's body had been recovered.

[news show opening music]

The Bushman's cave in the Northern Cape has taken another victim.

A Perth diver is missing.

[woman] As they're pulling the 270-meter line out, divers make this startling discovery.

Deon was all entangled in the cave line.

So that's how the-- how they both came up.

[woman] In the end, Shaw did bring Dreyer's body back to his parents.

What a great man. And it's-- it's devastating that he should be lost.

[woman] As the two divers' gear is brought out,

all eyes are on one vital piece of equipment--

a camera that had been strapped to Shaw's headgear.

And, tonight, we bring you exclusive excerpts of Shaw's footage

in this E! News special report.

There's several issues going with that tape.

The first thing is we actually really knew what happened to Dave.

There was no speculation.

It was there.

David recorded exactly what went on and that is unique.

But it's a snuff tape.

Dave there was breathing, and you could hear him breathing,

and you could hear his last breath.

And now we're talking about some leak tape going out live

and showing exactly what happened on TV.

So I tried to stop that, and the only way I could stop it was actually talk over it.

So I actually went to the studios and, literally, talked over it in the studio.

And at this point, I could barely walk, let alone anything else.

[man] There was an internal debate within us, the team,

of how much to show.

And, yes, we can stop short to the last breath,

but you can stop even earlier or earlier or earlier, we're not sure.

What-- what I always did was take it to the cat's cradle,

you know, where he's trying to cut and then he tries to pull the line.

And then there's some sounds on the thing that-- that sound like the last breath.

[gasping for air]

Yeah, and that we would cut in there.

[Don] Dave comes to the bottom and follows the line to the body.

He gets to the body.

We thought it was a skeleton, but it wasn't.

It had soft tissue and was buoyant.

As soon as he starts to work with the body,

the body starts to move as though it's actually spinning.

It started floating, and entangled with Dave's torc.

Normally, Dave would have put the torch around his neck.

He can't do that because the camera's there,

and it's too big to lift his hand over the top off.

Once the body started floating, he got caught with his torch.

Dave tried to cut the line, but his breathing got faster and faster,

which was the beginning of the end.

He lost consciousness due to the high level of CO2 generated by his efforts.

[Dave struggling]

[Don] First time I saw the video, I sort of really lived it with Dave.

When he stopped breathing,

I almost stopped breathing, and it took me a long time,

over half an hour, to actually recover enough to move.

[woman] Dear Ann, when a stone is dropped into a lake,

it quickly disappears from sight,

but its impact leaves behind a series of ripples

that broaden and reach across the water,

an influence for good that will reach the lives of many others.

How true that has been.

[Don] There is

a huge amount of symbolisms and ironies in the story.

Dave Shaw went down to get a body

for the sake of the parents,

for the sake of his ego,

he then sacrificed his life.

[Theo] He still keep his promise to bring up the body.

[Peter] You know, nobody there was a hero,

nobody wanted to be hero. Nobody became a hero.

[Verna] We were just divers doing something that we really,

really enjoyed and had a passion about.

And this dive became something so much bigger, so much more.

[Stephen] All I'm saying is tell everybody's story, because everybody there has a story.

[Don] As soon as possible, I got everyone together and showed them the tape.

Everyone had done to their utmost to make sure that I came out okay.

I needed to make sure everyone knew what was happening,

telling the story correctly.

-I wait for your wave. -Right.

I can feel the hairs on the back of my neck.

[Don] It's real. You know it's real.

[laughs]

[Don] Remember, I'm giving you that this is Dave's death now.

When you're in the water, it actually becomes very real.

And we're going to do this half a dozen times.

Want to practice again?