have been carried out by coal miners operating without the knowledge or support of the trade unions involved in the industrial actions. While reporting restrictions in place at the time might have constrained New Zealand reporting,, Australian newspapers were under no such restrictions. Many Australian news papers carried a 30 April report about the passenger train crossing the bridge about four hours after the explosion of six dynamite shots had damaged the piles and stringers of the bridge. Also reporting the explosion had failed to destroy the bridge because the charges were laid against the grain of the wood. Speculation about who might have committed the deed were many and varied. While many Australian newspapers were happy to watch from afar, more in depth and independent journalistic investigation was limited. At least one later author speculated that the charges were carefully misplaced with the intention only of warning open-cast miners who were working. Reaction Upon hearing the news, Prime Minister Sidney Holland denounced the bombing, calling it an "infamous act of terrorism", as well as a "diabolical act of sabotage" and part of "a desperate cold war". Holland announced an investigation, but the identities of the perpetrators were never discovered. The next day, 1 May, when calling for volunteers to register for the newly formed Civil Emergency Organisation, which was being set up to protecting life and property, he described the bridge sabotage as a tactic "to stop urgently-needed coal from reaching the people’s fireplaces." And said "... it was miraculous that the attempt was not accompanied by serious loss of life ..." The then Leader of the Opposition, Labour's Walter Nash also condemned the sabotage and called on law-abiding citizens to co-operate with authorities to apprehend the perpetrators and prevent further acts. A leader of the striking miners "knew nothing" about the sabotage attempt, and appealed for "all miners to refrain from provocative acts." The local police sergeant was "shocked and disappointed" by the sabotage and the open-cast mine-workers thought it a senseless act. Historians opinions are also varied. Richardson, in his history of the United Mineworkers Union, accepts the police assessment that the sabotage was an attempt intimidate the open-cast miners and that Holland exploited the opportunity the event presented to announce the formation of the Civil Emergency Organisation. Beath, writing in Te Ara, however, argues that the act was one of sabotage, rather than terrorism, and the