Thread: Missing Bushwalkers - What a Week-end!

Well it turned out to be one of our more memorable family Easters. You may recall I have posted stories previously about our family retreat, "Highview", which is a house our family built in remote bushland near Somerset Dam. Here is a quick photo to recap:



We planned to have a family week-end away across Easter and Scallops and Kat from the forum came up with us for a day trip on Saturday. Here is the only photo we actually managed to take before events conspired to make photography a low priority...



About 2:45pm Scallops and I and our respective wives went for a short walk to inspect the alternate access road. At the same time my mother and her friend, both in their 60s, walked off in the other direction up to a small knoll about 300m from the house. They had only intended to do this short walk which mum has done many times before and had no water or anything else - just cardigans.

About 3:30pm as our party was heading back to the house along the track, we got caught in a moderately heavy shower of rain. We arrived back at about 3:45pm and dad asked if we had seen my mother and her friend as they had not yet returned. At this stage most of us didn't think anything much of it although dad was starting to get worried. He was the only one who had been told just how short their walk was planned to be so naturally he expected them back promptly.

After 4pm we started searching out from the house and calling out. Dad and Scallops drove back down the access track to a point where a gully crosses the road. One of the circuit walks we have done descends this gully and then you return to the house via the road. We could hear them calling out from the house at the top of the ridge - but there was NO response from mum or her friend.

At 4:40pm Scallops my wife & I commenced searching the slope below the house on the northern side, just in case they had chosen to descend that side of the hill. Again we could be heard from the house and vice versa but there was no response from the missing walkers. We planned to turn around at 5pm to give us enough time to reach the house before dark. As it was, we got back only 10min later and made the decision to call for help.

I dialled triple-0 and after some initial trouble getting the dispatcher to understand where exactly we were (the house has no actual address), was told to expect a call from the local Esk police. By now it was dark and we were well and truly worried. The house is not set-up for bushwalking, so there are no really good torches or flares, or EPIRBs or anything. A few years ago I gave my parents a couple of handheld UHF radios to use when on the mountain but, for whatever reason, they had charged them but not actually brought them.

About 6pm we got a call that the local constable was on his way out and we arranged to meet him down the hill on the "main" road and guide him in. Scallops & Kat followed us down in their Defender and by now the showers had started to make the track a bit slippery. Since there was nothing else they could do we said goodbye at the bottom and waited for the cops.

The first constable arrived in a regular police Falcon - great! After going to great lengths to explain to the dispatcher the nature of the track. However the next constable from Lowood just by chance decided to bring his own vehicle, a 1999 Td5 Defender . They followed us back up the hill - very trusting since the track appears even less obvious at night and we could just possibly have been leading them into a bikie ambush .

Once they saw what we were dealing with and the fact that we had two "elderly" (I put that in quotes because that's how the police called it in and I would not dare refer to mum that way myself) women out in the bush at night, in the rain without equipment, they made the call to the local search & rescue co-ordinator to fire up a search party.

Sometime later, about 8pm, we got a call that the search & rescue sergeant informing us that he and his posse were en-route and I headed back down the mountain to meet them and guide them in. By this stage the road was quite slippery so many vehicles coming back uphill was going to be interesting. At the bottom we were met by the Sergeant (S & R co-ordinator), Inspector (his offsider) - in a Prado, the dog squad guy with a German Shepherd in a Rodeo and four SES in a Toyota troopie with trailer full of gear.

We headed back up the hill and by now things were very greasy. We had traction-control cutting in for long periods, but I was very aware this was an indicator that things would be significantly harder for the other vehicles. I was worried that the Rodeo wouldn't make it on its road biased tyres, but it was the SES who actually got stuck. We ended up abandoning their vehicle and trailer - their young guy had flattened the batteries (yes, both of them) as he didn't realise not to turn off the motor whilst winching .

Up the top it looked like a used police vehicle sales yard. The small clearing beside the house would not have fitted any more vehicles. The poor SES people trudged up the hill in the rain with one woman in their group yelling at the young guy about how to winch properly all the way.

The Sergeant went out to look at the forest and concluded that it was too dangerous to send anyone in there at night. The vine scrub is so dense that searchers would have to be only 1.5m from each other or risk getting lost themselves. We dutifully answered a million questions five time over to all the police and after satisfying themselves that my parents were not fighting and the ladies were not likely to be abducted or shot by poachers, decided that a full scale search would commence at first light. The chopper was booked and catering was arranged for the SES volunteers (this seemed to be the biggest logistical issue).

We then spent a fairly pleasant couple of hours with the police just chatting. They were all generally pleased to have this type of call-out at Easter with plenty of tea and cake to eat than a road accident. The local constable with his Defender seemed the most in his element. We whipped the battery out of my father's car and he drove down to help recover the SES vehicle. A short time later he arrived back and said they were going again but he didn't want to think how they were going to actually turn their troopie and trailer around on the track.

At about 1am the Sergeant decided that the police should all descend to where they planned to setup their command post at the bottom of the hill. He was of the opinion that the track would be impassable so everyone would just have to walk in - 3-4km each way! We were advised to get some rest and send a family member down in the morning.

I think I got to sleep about 2:30am but kept waking up every time it rained. We all got up about 5:45am and started to pack and work out who was staying at the house and who was going down to the command centre. By this stage we were all worried how slippery the road would be. Growing up there were several occasions when we almost lost vehicles over the edge in the wet and this was about as wet a conditions as I have seen there.

Then at 6:40am we got a call from the farm house at the bottom of the hill - THEY WERE FOUND!

...Well, they weren't actually found. They just happened to walk into the farm. The sergeant had told us the night before of his search & rescue record - everyone he had been sent to find had been found. We are not sure, but I guess we will let him have this one too.

We quickly notified the police who, by this stage were all presumable ready to mobilise. They had a vehicle on its way up to set-up a communications tower and diverted it into the farm to check on mum and her friend. We continued to pack everything up and bug-out ASAP before the road got even worse.

The trip down the road confirmed that there was no way anybody would have gotten up! I went first with dad behind in the Pajero, winch ready to hook on if I got into trouble. Low second and slowly, slowly. Fortunately the ruts on the track were just deep enough to guide the wheels down without going over the edge. There were a few hairy moments when TC was on but everything was still pretty much locked-up and sideways. The nasty corners were actually not too bad but after one I had to stick my head out the window to check which way the front wheels were pointing. Towards the bottom there was one straight bit which was just "hang-on for the ride" but dince the track flattened out there was luckily no real danger of running off.

We got to the farmhouse about 7:30am. The first thing my mother said was "are we in trouble?"

The police had ascertained that there was nothing wrong with the ladies! Despite being a bit damp, they were perfectly fit and healthy. The only mishap (other than being hopelessly lost) was when mum nodded off leaning against a tree and fell over. She explained what had happened and below is my best interpretation of their route on an aerial photo.



It seems that they went to the top of the hill as planned but when they turned around to come back down, for some reason she got disoriented and took the wrong ridge. It was very dark and overcast so there were no shadows to hint they were headed in the wrong direction and the vine scrub is so dense that everywhere looks a bit the same. Once they had descended the wrong ridge for a bit and hadn't come across the house they realised something was amiss so decided to go down the gully which they believed would spit them out on the track. This would have been true if they were in the correct gully.

It was the fact that they were in a parallel gully that prevented them from hearing us calling out (and us from hearing them too). With the density of the bush and seeing as how they were being super-careful in the wet conditions, progress was very slow. They decided to stop and wait out the night at about 6pm. It was extremely fortunate that the cloud cover kept the night time temperatures relatively high. There was no real danger of suffering exposure - I think the overnight temp stayed above 20 degrees!

In the morning they resumed following the gully at 6am and reached the farmhouse at 6:30. Having passed through the hunger threshold, they were only a bit thirsty and damp. The adrenaline had helped prevent them from even feeling tired. It was quite apparent that there was no need for any medical attention. In fact I would have to say that in future I have even more confidence in my mother's health and fitness, if not navigation skills. All our worst case scenarios were based around one or both of them having sustained a serious injury.

Mum acknowledged that we probably had a harder night than they did, because they knew that they were fine. I mentioned that it was not the best way to spend an evening listening to police tell you when they will have to call the coroner to decide whether to continue the search. All in all though, a memorable Easter with highs, lows, a good outcome and some gnarly off-roading to boot!

A few things will definitely change up at Highview.
- Radios will now be compulsory to carry at all times away from the house, as will mobile phones (mum didn't have hers on her and we do have some coverage).
- Some good, long lasting torches will be kept at the ready.
- The solar electricity system will be upgraded in case we have to host another policeman's ball.

Most of the other really useful equipment such as GPS & first-aid kits we already have but in this instance, it was like someone getting lost in their own backyard. Very unexpected.

Thanks must go to Scallops & Kat for helping with the initial searching and general support. The local police for sticking with us long after their shifts had ended. The Ipswich search & rescue co-ordinator and his team for pulling out all stops and keeping us well informed of proceedings. The local SES people for coming out in miserable conditions only to get stuck and then be sent home again. And who knows how many others who turned up on Sunday morning only to be told they were thankfully not needed after all.

WOW....I am so glad your mum and her friend are alright.......take those emergency steps now and don't put them off..........BTW what did you get for your birthday.....besides a found mum



Mrs ho har