Appogie Production. Welcome back everyone. I'm sitting here with Joanie here in Brisbane. Hello yet again, I'm back episode three and we just getting now Mojo, aren't we? Joy Like? This is not natural about this episode by telling you all about a story and share with you why words are important and what your words say can impact somebody else. I've had a lot of this happened to me through
the journey. My brother took his own life, and you know, I think the catalyst for him doing that was the police telling us that they'd located my mother and she didn't want anything to do with us, essentially, and that was proven at the inquest to be incorrect. No one actually has ever sighted my mum or spoken to her identified her. So not so long after Mum went missing, a friend of mine engage with a psychic who had done a very accurate reading for her sister in law.
Her parents had been in a car accident in New Zealand, and this psychic was able to tell her exactly what happened and sadly her dad passed away in that accident. And my friend was telling me about this and how accurate this woman was, and I said, do you think that she would help me do a reading, or we're desperate. At this point, I'm like, I don't know what's happened. I feel. It was around two thousand and four, so
mom had been missing for about seven years. Anyway, she went and asked her if she would talk to me, and she said, look, I don't do it. It's not what I do. It's just something that I have in me. But I'm happy to write her a letter about what I feel and what I see. And so she wrote to me a letter and she told me that my mum was alive and living in Mare. Now. Mare is situated about six hours northwest of Byron Bay, New South Wales, so I knew about the Byron Bay connection at that point.
So I was like, okay, we're talking in the same versifity. We're not talking Western Australia or Tasmania. We're all in that same pocket, which seems to be the case with my mum's situation. So she wrote that my mom's house was situated on the low side of the road, just outside town and there's a dip in the road. She wrote that my mum would sit and drink cups of tea whilst watching the mist roll over the fields. One
of my mom's favorite movies was Wuthering Heights. And if my brother I'm not pretty Cliff so low, I shouldn't have thought of it. It would agree to me to marry Heathcliffe now. So I imagine my mom's sitting there, drinking her cups of tea as she did, and a pretty little teacup waiting for her Heathcliff. The lady warned me in the letter not to try and look for her and said it would be detrimental to my children.
That's very hard to hear, and I was more confused than comforted and told the police what she had told me. That's when the nightmare started. A reoccurring dream I had on repeat for years where Chris and I drove to Maurie. We found a house just outside of town where there was a dip in the road and it had a big, long concrete footpath that went up to the front door. And in the dream, I have Darcy on my hip as a baby, and I'm holding Ella's hand, who is three.
Chris is waiting in the car. He's got the window down. As I'm walking up to the door, I knock on the door and my mum opens the door and she closes the door in my face, doesn't say anything, and I turn around and I walk back up to Cree and she opens the door and she shoots me into that while I'm holding my children. So to me, that was the detriment for me finding my mum, detriment to my children, and that haunted me for years. I could
not get that dream out of my head. I even rang more a police and said, this is what I've been told, and he goes, oh, well, there is a dip in the road outside of town, so I've never driven there. I cannot bring myself to do that, probably because I'm dramatized by the dream that im on to repeat. But these are problems that you have, and this is sort of part of your subconscious self trying to process and work out what does that mean exactly and what
are you supposed to do with that information. So while I appreciate people trying to help and give you the information, that whole looking for her and having consequence was really hard for me. Like that was a very hard thing for me because I took it pretty literally, like, you know, something might happen if I go digging and I'll tell you even not so long ago, I was worried about walking out of my front of my house. Yes, and you know that because I was panicking at some page.
So I don't know what could happen here, like I'm poking the bear and it's left for me. And when I mentioned it to the detective on the case, she turned around and said to me, oh, well, don't worry, we've got people here. And I went, not close and not out the front of my house. You don't. So there were times when I have been quite worried about myself.
And I'm sure there are other people in my same circumstances, because let's face it, if someone's gone missing and there's no answer, there's usually probably something that's gone wrong, and you know who knows, Like I won't name them, but there's plenty of cases that I know that are happening even right now, where you might not want to poke the bear. I have a fear. I don't know. I kept thinking that someone might just shoot me, Like I will just walk down my stairs and someone will shoot
me to shut me up. And that's pretty horrifying, to be honest, And I'm scared even telling you that, because I don't really want to put that into the universe. At the end of the day, I'm the daughter trying to find my mum. I'm not trying to bring problems to other people or cause issues for others. But if someone's done something wrong, who's fighting for mom, who's fighting for her? She has no voice, She's not here to
tell us what happened. And unfortunately that means I have to suck it up and be brave and actually go and do the things that terrify me. That includes doing podcasts, you know, and talking about it openly and honestly, and having everyone judge and jury what's happened and how why I'm here and what I'm doing, so I'll never forget.
When I listened to one of the episodes of The Lady Vanishes and I heard Finnan Ramichal, who was the real Ramichal, not the one in Australia that took his identity. So I'm sitting there, I'm listening to this episode and I'm hearing this man with a very thick Luxembourgish accent, French accent, German accent saying.
Give me Sally Leiden, give me Sally Leiden's address. Where does Sally Leiden live, Give me the name of details of give me her phone number.
Give me her address. On repeat, he kept on repeating that constantly.
I want to contact Shellie Leighton. Give me the address of Shellie Leiden, address and email and all you have and telephone number.
So even way back then, I felt that that was again a bit of a moment.
I found that quite confronting, and I did Allison had rung him and didn't know that that was happening. So when everyone else is listening to it for the first time, I was listening to it for the first time as well. So at the Sydney show, Chris and Adele from Search Shog Sydney came along. They're in the uniform and so people knew who they were, and I think at that point they also met a lovely lady named Mindy and
she's now working on the Deer Rechelle podcast. So there's lots of connectors through this space when people come together and help each other. And I was talking to them about a situation where a phone call had been made to crime stoppers very very early on, and this is way before any media or anybody really knew about my
mum's case and a guy had rung. What he actually says in the report is that a woman by the name of Marion who went missing from northern New South Wales is buried near the bike track on Niagara Street in Armadale. And when I read the report that was in the brief of evidence, I was quite disturbed by the fact that the first initial officers from Armidale didn't
do a search. They just went and did a door knock on an address which was noted which will keep confidential, and they spoke to a gentleman who had been named as the person and an interesting name. It's sort of like an abbreviation if I can sort of use not the real name that we've got because I want to keep that identity private for the person. But let's say Daniel and someone calling him Danny, right, so that kind of scenario. Anyway, they went to the house and spoke
to this man. He's like, well, he has a home line that has restrictions on it so he can't ring out, but he can only receive calls, so it couldn't have possibly been him who made the one eight hundred call to crime Stoppers and they sort of just took that and went Okay, then no problem, and I think the notation says, oh, well, there was nothing really to follow up on, so no further action required at that point. And they linked it to my mum because my mum's name was Marian and she was no one to be
missing from northern New South Wales. But that was about the end of it. And then when Gary Sheen took over, he actually did another pull up of that and said to me, I've found this in the file. I've asked my commander if I can go out and do a search with a Cadava dog. And this is where it gets a bit messy, because he told me that he went out for a day and it rained and they
found nothing. And then when Channel seven interviewed him, he said they'd gone out for two days and had ses helping them, and then in another report says it was out for three days. So I'm like, okay, well, was it one day, two days or three days that you went searching? It was very unclear to me, and so I think that was probably the drive for me to go. If my mum's body is there, I want to go and investigate it myself. So that sort of probed me into the idea of if I could make that happen,
that would be amazing. And when I was talking to Chris and Adell about it, they were doing a search for another woman in Queensland because they're based in Sydney, and being that this was in Armadale, they were suggesting that maybe they could stop on the way home on their way back and we could do a dog search there. So that's how that whole thing sort of started. And I asked Journey again if you would come with me, and she said yes, of course. So you know, that
was something that we were doing in the background. Nobody knew, who, had no media following us. We just did it in our own time, and I was trying to process it, and Chris Darcy actually turned around and said to me, he goes, family don't usually do this. Now. This is not normal that you are here looking for your mother's body. This is not normal, And I said, well, I don't think I'm a normal person, but especially when it comes
to this. But I just for myself, I needed to do it to know that I can put it to rest and know we've done the job properly. Well, I just racked up at my local shopping center where there's a kmart. I'm going to go in and see if I can purchase a high viz vest for me and
one for Chris. As tomorrow morning at four am, will be making our way down to Armadale to do a search with search dog Sydney, and Joanie is joining us as well, so she's just about to jump on a flight heading up to Newcastle where she'll stay the night, and then she's going to drive from Newcastle up to Armadale and meet us there in the morning. I know Chris and Adele and the team with their dogs have been out there already today and pop the drone up to get lots of images and map out where we're
going to be searching tomorrow and the next day. Mix of emotions as I start this next part of the journey to find my mum and see if that crime stop is call that came in to the Armadale area in two thousand and eight has any legs and so began a crazy journey. So for me and Chris, it's about a six hour drive and we were trying to aim to be in Armadale by about ten o'clock being realistic, so I think we were up very early, around quarter
to four in the morning. Chris is just filling up the car withst and petrol as we make our way down to Armadale. I can tell by the bags onto my eyes. I have not slept at all last night, and I woke up at about twenty past three. I had a really bad vertigo and I was very wobbly. Had to hold on it's everything while I went to the bathroom. I'm feeling quite nauseous right now, actually don't feel very well. I'm not sure I feel like driving for the next six hours. But anyway, we'll see how
we go and try and have a sleep here. Hopefully the nausea goes away. So we just stopped to go to the bathroom. When I got into the bathroom, there was a young girl in the toilet who had just come out. There was another lady who was bending over the toilet when I walked in there. Anyway, I've gone in closed to my cubicle door and I've tried to push the toilet rob containing back up into the wall and it made quite a loud bang, and this woman started having a go at This young girl and started
saying I've got a I've got a gun. I've got a gun that's in the car. The police think I'm going to shoot somebody. My heart does not need this sort of thing in the middle the morning as I'm on my way to Armadale. That was a moment in itself. I've thought I was going to have a heart attack, but anyway, I survived once again. And you know, we saw the sunrise come up and we were just on
a mission to find mum. And I don't know, it was a weird feeling as I approached it, but I sort of just seemed to remove myself from the reality of what I'm actually doing and just put my cap on and go on a search mission. I'm not the daughter. I'm just on a search mission to find the answers. And we were a little bit late. It took us a bit longer to get there than we thought.
So meanwhile, I'm flying from Victoria up to Newcastle and then I'm staying overnight and then hiring a car to get from Newcastle to Armadale. Well, here I am at the airport, ready to jump on the long term parking bus and.
Head in to fly to Newcastle once I forward was closed while phones must be switched off the flight road and laptops stored away inside the bags take off the landing. We can assist you with anything. Don't hesitate to her. Let's get a quiet of us.
Wanted a lot of minutes and should be touching the ten and.
So traveling through all of I think it was a three and a half hour drive, I think, so that was organized very quickly.
So that was, yeah, basically a flight, a flight.
For me and overnight stay and then traveling up just because we wanted to be together to do it.
And so Joni, you know, coming and helping me every time is you know, more flights, more car higher and for us as well, like we have the expense of driving there, and yeah, Jodah, we've got a big room this time, and n bumped in with Chris and I didn't sleep in the same bed, you know, I'm share
her home room. But doing it together and then taking people out for dinners and saying thank you for being so grateful for their efforts, because people are doing it all based on their donations as well, you know, that's how they run their business is on donations. Something I've always asked you this, but you should tell people like why are you doing this? Why are you helping?
Why?
Why?
Why?
Why?
Well, basically, I'm just an extremely determined person who does things until the end. That is all I can honestly say. So when my mother in law came to me, her grandmother went missing, as you know, so we spent fifteen years of our lives getting from point A to point Z where we did locate her. So finding her and getting to the end of it is that's just what I'm like.
I'm like a dog with a bone.
I don't leave things until they're actually wrapped up or and we've spoken about this many times, if you need to wrap this up, or if you need to do other things and then come back to it. So I guess that is my motivation, as you know, like I enjoy gathering facts information together. I love going through things, and I love pulling everything in and working it out simple.
I think I remember you saying to me once, because I've asked you this quite a few times, and you said to me that most bizarre thing ever, you kind of felt a bit responsible because you found the ad in the period. That is true.
So basically, and this is why people query me often, you know, what are you doing this for? So basically I was a podcast listener. I was listening around, I was listening to everything. I enjoyed it. It was like
my hobby, like a lot of other people are. But when I was sitting there that night having a little search around in all my little databases and that that I had learned how to do because of searching for Chris's great grandmother, that ad popped up, and I knew at that point in time my life was just going to change.
I knew it straightaway. That was the golden ticket. Yeah.
So basically I thought to myself at that point, Okay, your podcast, if there was no actual outcome as such, like there was no way forward, your episodes would have been done in however many you did.
Yeah, well, we were saying there was probably seven episodes. Yeah, so unless we find something and we found it, yeah, and then you found it.
So therefore I feel as though, Okay, I've basically thrown this big bomb into your life. So therefore I feel as though I need to as much as possible actually see this through to the end.
That's why I'm still here. And I think from my point of view too, Like you've given so much to me and the case that I feel like I wanted to bring you on this journey with me to see it through, because in my world, it would be pretty horrible to sit there and go, well, you've done all of this, you've found all of these things for you later I'm out. So for me, I know that finding an answer and getting to the end as best we
can is really important for you too. You know, we've been friends for six years now, so yeah, you know, we've learnt a lot about each other and I know who you are as a person and I'm really grateful to be able to do that. Your husband, who's super supportive, you know, and who is a bit like my Chris Prier.
And look, it's not something that I ever visage like I know at times we'll talk on the phone. I mean, we're two states away from each other, and it is quite bizarre, like when you actually think about it, a lot of my friends have focused in my local area. I'm in a rural area. But for some reason we've just come together and we're on a mission. So it's no more complicated than that.
Really.
Yeah, well, I'm very grateful that you're here still. Well, I mean if we talk a little bit about what happened in the dog search. Right when we arrived, Jonie and Adele were already doing a scale of one area and Chris Darcy greeted myself and my Chris and we spent the day in Armadale.
We finally made it. Are you going, jeez, Louise, counce.
The dogs there?
The dogs are just coming around the bend.
Okay, so is this the actual bike track here?
That's why have the bike tracks?
Okay, the second five.
Track before searching.
I wonder where exactly they noted about the entire area with the drone yesterdays giving the dog's nose and sped to do their job very good. You know, we had a lot of people onlookers walking up and down the street looking at us as what are you guys doing? Why are you here? And we were getting a bit panicky, like especially when the drones went up, because Chris had actually got approval from the airstrip to put the drones
up so that they could do mapping. So they actually put the drones up and map out a whole area. And then the dogs actually have these little GPS collars and they're different colors for each dog, and then they can see exactly where the other dogs have walked. So it's quite a phenomenal system that they've got going on, and you know, it just made me feel better being there. I've always wanted to go there and see it, but
I didn't want to do it by myself. So it's very interesting with the cadaver dogs because they're obviously smelling a scent, they're following their noses. Where at the Training Academy of Search Dogs, a volunteer organization that teaches dogs and handlers to find missing people.
We've been called into quite a few missing person searches, both live and deceased. However, most of our work at the moment is for human remains detection of the long term missing.
We were walking along their joney and on the other side of the bridge, Chris and Rufus heading to the other side of the bridge because remembering too, it's difficult to work out when someone says the left, but you can see here too, like it's quite denseer. There's obviously being water that's come over the bridge, and I'm guessing these I think it's got the measurement here for when it floods.
And they've actually got like a closed.
Gate on either side of this causeway here, so obviously does flood. So when you look at that street, there's actually one of those flood zone poles. Yeah, so the instant I looked at that and I thought, that's a flood zone like that floods. If they've got that sign there, that's telling us that this is an area that definitely floods.
And I was walking and I stood and looked over and just had a moment by myself in that space and looked at the reeds below me, and I could see the water and the reeds were all bent over, and in my heart, I was like, if her body was here, it's probably been washed away. If they've dumped dead body in the water, it's potentially been washed away, And how will we ever find her if that's the case. So I sort of had this moment once again. You know,
we letterbox drive dropping. I've got Sonya's cards that she made Eko, you know who spent all this money making these beautiful glossy, double sided hard cardboard brochure. I just went and put them in all the mailboxes, thinking if someone saw anything it would be helpful to know. We've got like a little blurb on the back, and there's a QR code on here as well, so people can
actually scan that and find out what's happening. And I'm just getting easy in people's mailboxes just to bring some awareness to the local community that my mummy is a missing person. We are getting a lot of attension, so a little weird feeling, but hopefully, you never know, people might actually start talking a little bit. It's not a very a huge town, so these guys don't look like they get much because there's cobwebs, they're mailbox you know.
One of the things I really wanted to do, which sort of stems back to that dream that I kept having, was something I've thought about for a long time because I had another cleavoyant tell me, actually too Clevelance tell me them they could see my mum was buried under floorboards, and so the drama of that in itself is quite hard to fathom with because you think that she's been murdered and someone's done something to her, right, and that was very early on, when I'm still trying to grapple
with the police telling me she's alive and well and doesn't want anything to do with me, and just me knowing something was not right. Later in that day, we made the brave decision to walk up to the house that we knew to be the point of.
Entry stiff you like, So just where the alleged crime Stoppers caller came from was the house that we actually visited. We'd spied it a few times during the day, hadn't we Like, we were kind of as we're doing a little bit stopping, we're kind of looking around. We've done as much work as we can on who's currently living there now to sort of know what we're going to be facing.
And once again I was in that position of going, I don't really want to go and knock on these people's door if they have no idea of what this is about or have anything to do with it, and upset them and make them feel like something's happened and whatnot. But we didn't enter the premises. The lady was actually already in the garden.
Hello, how are you? My name is a girl.
I'm from Searchgog, Sydney. So what we do is we look for missing people.
Sally here, her mother went missing back in nineteen ninety seven.
Yeah, and then Chris goes in and does the search, and as we're standing at the front, the granddaughter rocks up and she's like, Hi, what's happening, And so she sort of negotiates with us and says, oh yeap. Nana says it's fine. So I'm going to myself, Okay, Well, this is potentially the house that has been nominated in the crime stoppers call. And I've always had a vision of that house in my head. I could actually see the house. Looked nothing like my vision, I want to say,
but it was really vital. And I asked Chris if he could take Rufus the dog underneath the house and just to do a search, just so I could walk away from that space and go, I know that's been checked.
Now.
We were just hoping maybe we could just let the dog come up and have a sniff around and see if there was any trace of her. There's half a million dollars up for grabs. If you found her.
He'll learn a bit.
Thank you for doing that, Ankaya never as you say. And the lady remembered the police coming and verified for us that her husband had passed away. The next time, they came, which is what we knew because what was in the report. So we had the right family, we had the right information, but we still are not confident today that they had the right person ad with somebody else.
And that was a big day. I was exhausted, plus I had still was not feeling very well, and Adele actually had to do some work so she didn't come. But we took Chris out for dinner and we were sitting there and you had gotten alerk come through. So for those of you who don't know, Joni has got this really great thing which I'm sure other people know but I didn't know about it, which is a Google trendsearch and you can actually put in code words and
it actually will bring up information for you. And she alerted me to the fact that a letter had been sent to the Attorney generally New South Wales from New South Wales Police an overview of what the coroner had said at the findings. So when you have a finding from the coroner, the police have six months to formally let the Attorney General know what has happened to your person and they literally take it right up literally the
last minute. I was shocked. I was absolutely shocked to see that they had removed the words of the coroner on that document that went to the Attorney General's Office and lo and behold, it wasn't just mum. It was multiple cases, wasn't it. So the letters were basically exactly the same written. That was just almost and it was just you know, we did a review of the findings for that year, so the actual words that were removed from the letters was ongoing investigation, so it was monitoring
and review only. So basically the coroner sends their findings recommendations to the New South Wales Police and the letters that are actually sent to the Attorney General removes the word investigate. We were sitting there eating and we're talking about it and you were like, oh my god, there's molden. Yeah, it's not just you. I didn't know that the New South Wales Police had sent anything to the Attorney General's Office, and then I was quite concerned because that language is
very different. So the coroner is saying, and she says, at the end of her findings, I am leaving it with the New South Wales Homicide Investigation Team for ongoing investigation, review and update.
I recommend that the new South Wales Commissioner of Police calls the investigation into the death of missing person Flora Bella Natalia at Marian Ramcol formerly known as Marion Barter to be referred to or to remain within the State Crime Command Unsolved Homicide Team for ongoing Investigation, review and monitoring.
And then they took out the words ongoing investigation and then I remember hearing about it. We'll just do an update in a review. And here's the cracker. Guys, they don't have to update review for the first five years after an inquest. They don't have to tell me a thing. And because the case is open but inactive, unless any new information becomes available to them, and guess who gets the new information. We have to give it to them for them to do something unless it falls in their lap,
they're not looking for it. So it puts us back in that position where you're back to the families haveting to go to, the media, haveting to do. You know what we do. Even my lawyer said to me at the end of the inquest, he goes, the media might be your best bet, Sally, and I'm like, I'm tired. I'm tired of having to go to the media, Like you know, I'm very grateful for it all, but it's exhausting and very stressful to have to put your whole life out in the world and have people you know
trying to help you. That that can be it's as great as it is, it can be very hard and and very exhausting as well. Okay, So then the next morning we tried to get some sleep that night and we said goodbye to you because you went off on your merry way down it to new and Chris and I went with Adele and Chris followed them out to Inverrel.
And the reason we went to Inverrel was because there had been during the podcast a gentleman had gone into a police station in Penrith, I believe, and said that he had coordinates of a location of where my mum's body was buried, and that happened to be in Inverrel. And you know, we've got connectors as well, don't We to Inverrel with people who live in in Verrel who we know had connections in Byron Bay, and we were just our brains were just going a million miles an hour.
So what's interesting in this location is that there's a family connection with a lot of the same family who are also connected to dog food manufacturing in Byron Bay, and there's a connection there with the delivery driver for that dog food company who told everybody he was one of the owners of the company, but in fact he was just the driver and he has a connection.
So he thought that was quite an odd coincidence that this popetive location is that as such, so at least.
Doesn't look like a standard house. It actually looks like multiple small dwellings dwellings. The police have been here and spoken to them and they just had a look around. They didn't actually do a dog search or probing or anything like that, and he just said reported back that it didn't look like there was a grave.
Fare, to which I went, well, that's really good looking.
Thank you. If you're going to take all the gilatic come out here, I would have thought you would actually probably do a proper search of the area. In What year was that that was recent it came out here, Yeah, like twenty twenty one, so we're looking at it's twenty two years.
Unfortunately, Clandestin engraves do change considerably in that amount of time, and.
It would be very difficult to recognize from an untrained why I always feel like it was the same with Finan Ramika. When we were driving to his house, I was saying to the team, you know, it got to be conscious that these people have forgotten nothing to do with my mum's disappearance at all when sort of coming into their space, and so just for knowledge, this is for location here. Yeah, hello, how are you snucky? How are you? That's good?
My name's a Dalom from Search Dog City and we're currently in the area doing a search for a missing person and this is Sally and it's actually her mother that we're searching for.
She said, no problem, just keep the dogs away from caddle, that's her main concern. I said, well, the cattle are actually down the front gate. We'll make sure we're and he's on the lead. Anyway. She said that the police had been twice. What didn't That's interesting, which is interesting because the dates she gave are like a few years ago. Yep was the last time, and they came a few
years before that, So that's very interesting. Why were they coming twice and why were they coming before those coordinates were handed in before the cause If you couldn't give dates all right, she wished me well in my search. So you know, it's nice that people actually.
Very accommodating the.
This must be very weird for them, you know, to go why would there be coordinates on my property like that is a weird, weird situation.
So set the noise of the camera taking photos from the drone.
Yeah right, it's all right, all right, Well we'll just gone this snapping and have a look check it all out.
So what I'll do is definition. So meanwhile I'm going south.
So essentially the wonderful Ballan, a retiree, did a bit of a map of the family group of the man in Armadale whose house was supposedly connected to the crime stoppers call. So I then on my way back down, did actually meet up with the wife of another family met with a similar name, just to check as to whether she'd ever heard anything about this, whether there was any connection there, etc. And so I did that on the way down. There was no results, so she had
no idea. There was no connection there. They were separated, so there was no alliances or anything like that. So then I just continued my way down, went through Cessnock, which is where mister Blum lived, and his family members lived for an extended period of time, so visited there, had to look at the house, knocked on the door, attempting to find the neighbor who signed the passport under his new name. He had passed away, so again we're
just dealing with time. So none of the neighbors around that surrounding house knew anything about it because they were knew they had no idea and then just went in and had to look at the records in the cesnot library and no joy there.
So down I went back down to new Castle. You were by yourself too.
I was by myself, but I guess probably twenty years social work Cross's intervention. I've never ever been injured. I've always gotten myself out of sticky situations, so I wasn't really that concerned.
Driving home, I was a very long day, way longer than I was sort of anticipating, because we'd gone out in Virel and then we had to go all the way back to Brisbane, you know, just to be able to reflect and be very grateful for the opportunity of the help that was given to us. And I ticked those boxes like we checked. There was no sign of
my mum anywhere. And I think it's a very hard thing to sort of process in the world of the missing, because how devastating it is to think that you want to find your missing mother's bones in a lake or in a creek or in a cow paddock, but you desperately want to find them so that you can have peace and you can know that you've done everything you possibly can. And I think I've just said that for so long, like I'm only doing this so my kids don't have to you know, I'll do the best I
absolutely can to get the answers. But you know, it's a bit of a box ticking exercise at this point too, where we're just going, right, we didn't needed to do that. Bang, let's ticket, let's go. We've done that. Move to the next thing, and I can put that at rest. I can go, Okay, we did it, We've done it. I'm satisfied. I've done it myself. I'm at a point I don't trust anybody anymore. There are people I do trust, obviously, company excluded, but I've been let down, I've been disappointed.
I've been promised with no results, and that's very draining on a human body and a human soul because it depletes you of your energy, and so it is important that we go through these processes. And you know, it's mentally good for my health to do this, and I think my husband particularly and my eldest daughter, she sees that is important for me. She's like, right, I know you have to do this because it's important for you. So having the support of them is amazing as well.
I think that because what I've noticed over the time is that one incident or one situation you might have heard two or three or four or five or six different versions of that. So therefore it's sort of taught you. Okay, if I don't do it myself, then.
I'm never going to really know.
I don't know how many times we've picked through things over, especially over the phone, pick through words, pick through sentences to find out, Okay, is this accurate? Is this actually true? Was that a typo? How many typos have we come across?
Too many?
So it's just spelling dais problems, errors, two different versions of events, and so therefore you sort of think to yourself, Okay, you I think over this whole period has come to a point where you're like, like, if I don't see it myself. If I don't do it myself, if I don't read it myself or confirm it directly with that person, then I'm not trusting that. That's why I think you have to be constantly doing things yourself and seeing things with your own eyes, which.
And some people have referred and said, you know, you try to control the narrative. I'm like, I'm not trying to control anything, but I'm trying to make sure that the information is correct, the information is true and fact checked, because at the end of the day, there's too many things that haven't been done and I'm left to pick up the pieces because some people just come in, drop a bomb and leave and then I'm left to deal with it. That's right.
And also what we found too is one wrong move, so one wrong piece of information and you are going mentally down a whole nother track, and so it takes time to actually pull your own self back onto the truth of the matter. I think there's just so many different roads that you could go down with this, it's quite maddening.
Yeah, well, you've got to have fact Everyone talks about the rabbit holes that we've been down. I mean, there's plenty of them.
In the next episode of The Missing Matter Well where this is a big episode because we're going to tell you why the why Joanie and I are continuing on this journey and what have we found that we have not told you yet.
So before we go, I just like to give a shout out to Adele and to Chris Stacy from Search Dog Sydney. We couldn't have done that search without you, guys, and I'm really grateful for your energy, your professionalism, your enthusiasm, and your understanding of what it is to have to do such a task in looking for a missing loved one.
You guys are second to none in this area, and I'm really grateful for all your efforts and your kind and giving me the opportunity to do something that I really needed to do, so I'm really grateful for that. We've actually popped the Search Struck Sydney link in our show notes, so if you'd like to pop along, go and check out their Facebook page. They do work off donations as well, so I'm sure any offering would be very much appreciated in this space. Thanks again, guys,