He was in Warrnambool on Saturday, March 23, 2024 to speak at the Rotary Conference held at the Lighthouse Theatre.

Professor Dix has relatives in Warrnambool but is also a familiar face to those in the region's dairy industry for his work on truck and milk tanker safety over the past 10 to 20 years.

But his technical expertise in underground tunnels made worldwide headlines in November last year when he helped in the mission that ultimately freed trapped Indian miners after the road tunnel they were building collapsed.

The attention came as a surprise to Professor Dix who has flown under the radar of the public spotlight while being called on to work in a number of major disasters over the decades.

Professor Dix said he "didn't have a clue" that the world's media was watching him because he had little internet service in the remote location. The press, with their satellites, were beaming the story all across the world.

After getting the call for help from India's government, he made his way there and was taken to the remote location in the Himalayas via army helicopter.

"All I was asked to do was help. Also, it was voluntary," he said. "The rest was really tricky.

"Things were pretty bleak when I got there. They'd been trying to rescue for about four or five days.

"Pretty much everything had failed."

The auger machine they had been using to burrow through had "blown up" and "ripped itself out of the ground".

"We were getting more collapses and there had been a little earthquake. Things were looking not good," Professor Dix said. "I started to help."

Despite the seemingly grim outlook, he said he had a good feeling about the prospect of rescuing the men but he knew it wasn't going to be easy.

"In my whole career, I've never actually got a live person out before, ever," he said. "Normally, not only don't we get live people out, some of us get hurt as well."

There were a number of drilling options that they tried and abandoned, or had on standby in readiness, he said.

The one that ultimately succeeded and freed the workers after 17 days was putting people down a pipe and taking the rocks out by hand, one by one, and then slowly extending the pipe until they reached the young workers.

Professor Dix - an engineer and lawyer - had quietly been going about his work for decades but the events in India has brought more attention to them.

"What got me started in doing the underground stuff was the twin towers collapse in New York," he said.

He'd arrived on scene not long after the September 11, 2001 attacks to investigate the tunnels underneath to try and understand how they performed.

"That really changed the direction of my life," he said. "I couldn't understand how people would want to kill people they don't even know so I just thought I'd dedicate my life to helping people."

Among the list of things he has been asked to help with was the aftermath of the London and Madrid bombings as well as being a special investigator during the Burnley tunnel truck fire in Melbourne.