Once again, the Pike River families have been utterly vindicated in their battle to get a proper police investigation into what happened inside that mine on the 19^th of November, 2010. 

Police have today again revealed that they’ve spotted more bodies using the boreholes they’ve been drilling. This time it was two or three bodies in a crib room area, which they describe as a breakout communal area where they might have been having a short break when the explosion happened.

This is what, the third or fourth time that the police have spotted bodies while digging boreholes that these families had to fight to get done. 

And this time the significance is that for some families this settles the very thing that would've tormented so many of them of for nearly thirteen years: did the men survive that first blast? Could they have been saved before the second blast five days later?

This is what Rowdy Durbridge said today, he lost his boy Dan in the explosion, and he said: “I can take some heart in the fact that what’s been seen confirms they fell where they stood and didn’t spend days trapped in there alive like some people have tried to claim.” 

Imagine the peace of mind that will be giving some of those families.

I know not everyone agrees that we should be spending money on this investigation, or even cares anymore about what this investigation finds, but that is why I admire these families so much. 

Because they will know that they probably don’t have popular opinion with them anymore, but they fought the authorities anyway.

And man did they have to fight to get to this point.

A half-arsed initial investigation, WorkSafe withdrawing the charges against Peter Whittall, attempts to concrete over the mine’s entrance… I would given up by now I reckon.

I hope I never have to fight for something this hard. But they were right to, because they now know so much more than they did even two years ago. They've found 12 of their men, they know where they were when the explosion happened, and they know they didn’t survive that first blast. 

This will give at least some of them the one thing any grieving family deserves, which is answers and the peace of mind that comes from them.

And if police do decide later this year to pursue a prosecution, it might give those families the other thing they may also deserve.

Justice.