Australia news live: miner killed in underground rockfall at Ballarat goldmine, union says

The rockfall at the Ballarat Gold Mine trapped 27 workers, 26 of whom were rescued on Wednesday. Follow the day’s news live

Ballarat mayor Des Hudson told Sunrise news that the miner had reportedly died will be “devastating right across our community”.

[This will be] another tragic circumstance for our community, but we are a very resilient community. We are one that supports each other and we will do so again and our hearts go out to the family of that miner who never came home from work.

[And] also to the other miner who is currently in the Alfred hospital with very significant injuries and has a battle in front of him. We also extend our thoughts and best wishes to him and to his family. And also to those rescuers who will be continuing to work hard, working hard to try and be able to recovery the body of that miner and bring him to the surface.

We have spoken to WorkSafe. We were at the site last night until late. We are meeting with WorkSafe again shortly this morning to get more information on it. But we do know that the two workers were air legging, which is a type of manual mining, it appears under unsupported ground and there was a collapse.