He was one of the men who made international headlines for spending 321 hours trapped underground in the Beaconsfield Mine before miraculously walking free.
Now, Todd Russell is breaking his silence on his shock split from his ex-wife Carolyn Russell, with whom he shared three children.
‘I’ve done things in my past I’m not happy about, not proud of it one bit,’ he told A Current Affair in an interview set to air on Monday night.
Mine survivor Todd Russell (right) and ex-wife (left) are breaking their silence on their shock split
Mrs Russell said she couldn’t trust her husband to go anywhere, who both share three children (an older photo pictured)
Mr Russell and Brant Webb were both trapped almost one kilometre underground for two weeks in 2006 (pictured leaving the mine)
The Tasmanian gold mining survivor was trapped almost a kilometre underground for two weeks in 2006 with his work mate Brant Webb when a 2.2-magnitude earth tremor struck.
More than a decade later, Mr Russell is opening up about the bitter breakdown of his marriage, and the distrust his wife Carolyn had for him.
Mrs Russell told host Tracy Grimshaw that ‘there were other women’, which Mr Russell said he didn’t deny.
‘I never trusted him, wherever he went, I didn’t trust him,’ Mrs Russell said.
In an interview with 60 Minutes marking the tenth anniversary of the Beaconsfield Mine collapse, the pair revealed how Mr Russell was a changed man after the tragedy.
Mr Russell had previously bought 14 hectares of land for a sprawling family home with profits of a million dollar media deal.
‘When he came out he was different,’ Mrs Russell said.
The split comes 11 years after Mr Russell miraculously escaped the Beaconsfield Mine collapse
Mr Russell told A Current Affair he had done things in his past he wasn’t proud of (pictured with his family after escaping the mine)
Mrs Russell previously told the network her husband had changed after escaping the mine (pictured), which collapsed trapping the two miners in a steel cage for more than 300 hours
‘The kids would get really noisy and he’d get really angry, he used to yell at the kids, and he never used to do that before.’
Mr Russell and Mr Webb were stuck underground in a tiny steel cage, described as a ‘rat’s cage’, when the mine collapsed on Anzac Day. The pair weren’t discovered for another four days.
They were not rescued until two weeks after the collapse.
The two miners share the grief of losing workmate Larry Knight, who was killed in the collapse, where they spent their time trapped underground thinking the mine was going to collapse onto them and kill them as well.
The men miraculously walked free, pumping their fists into the air on May 9, with their families anxiously waiting.