Speaker 1: Approche production.
Speaker 2: Have you ever lost something, maybe it was your keys,
Speaker 2: your mobile phone, or something more valuable. To find them,
Speaker 2: you retrace your steps, You look in all the places
Speaker 2: they're most likely to be, and sometimes you look in
Speaker 2: places where they're probably not, but just in case. Sometimes
Speaker 2: when things go missing, you blame other people. You ask
Speaker 2: them if they've put them somewhere, if they've seen them.
Speaker 2: You sometimes think the worst, maybe they've been stolen, taken
Speaker 2: from you when you weren't looking. Some of those theories
Speaker 2: that you come up with when something goes missing are
Speaker 2: far fetched. You blame and have unreasonable thoughts. Those themes
Speaker 2: will be explored in this podcast, but not with insignificant
Speaker 2: material things, but with a person. This is a story
Speaker 2: of Desmond Francis Carr, who was last seen at three
Speaker 2: pm on August two, nineteen seventy nine, and then he disappeared.
Speaker 2: Nineteen seventy nine. The Prime Minister of Australia was Malcolm Fraser.
Speaker 3: We must guide Australia safely through the difficulties and the dangers.
Speaker 2: The Sony Walkman was released in Japan. NASA's first orbiting
Speaker 2: space station crashes to Earth after being in orbit for
Speaker 2: other six years.
Speaker 1: It's one thing. I'll live us again, see it score
Speaker 1: coming towards us.
Speaker 2: Margaret Thatcher was the UK's first ever female Prime minister.
Speaker 1: Dependent pause will dash about and you have to have
Speaker 1: an iron nerve.
Speaker 4: Which across is appropriate from Iron Lady.
Speaker 2: And Prisoner started on TV.
Speaker 5: Honey Side Still shot.
Speaker 2: At thirty eight years old. Desmond Francis Carr or Des
Speaker 2: as he was, was the youngest son of Dolly.
Speaker 5: And Frank Carr from WA.
Speaker 2: Frank DES's dad was a large man, not heavy, but
Speaker 2: tall and lanky. Frank worked for the main roads department
Speaker 2: that Jobby's son, Dez would one day inherit. Dorothy or
Speaker 2: Dolly as everyone knew her, was Frank's wife. They had
Speaker 2: a lovely marriage, lived in a quiet town called York,
Speaker 2: and lived a modest life with their three daughters and
Speaker 2: youngest son, Dez. There was one other child, his name
Speaker 2: was Max. Three days after Max was born, he passed away.
Speaker 2: Shirley DES's little sister recounts what life is like back
Speaker 2: then in York.
Speaker 4: Beautiful little town. I mean I could live there again
Speaker 4: now if I had two Yeah, would definitely days used
Speaker 4: to walk to school with me. Make sure that none
Speaker 4: of the kids picked on me, you know, if they
Speaker 4: did look out. He was very protective of me. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I had lots of little friends at school and that.
Speaker 2: Yet things were pretty simple for a teenager growing up
Speaker 2: in York. You loved afl and hung out with your mates.
Speaker 2: That's exactly how Dez grew into an adult. He loved
Speaker 2: hanging out with mates, watching TV and looking after his
Speaker 2: little sister Shirley.
Speaker 4: You know, we really got on well together. You know,
Speaker 4: mainly played football. Theirs wasn't really a very athletic person,
Speaker 4: you know, he used to like his TV. He wasn't
Speaker 4: a smoker or drinker. Then he used to look after
Speaker 4: me at school, at playtime and things like that. Where
Speaker 4: during when we're a bit older and they didn't want
Speaker 4: to be caught with little sister.
Speaker 5: Did he finish school?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think he left school third grade. Third what
Speaker 4: do you call it?
Speaker 1: That grade?
Speaker 4: That at high school? Yeah, it was pretty good at school.
Speaker 4: Not a gee whiz, but he got through like I did.
Speaker 4: You know, Green and Joy were the same. Nobody was
Speaker 4: extra bright, but we just managed to get through everything.
Speaker 5: Yet and growing up, what it does want to be
Speaker 5: what it was?
Speaker 1: The insident?
Speaker 4: Well, he wanted to be a race car driver. My
Speaker 4: dad put the stock to that, so I think he
Speaker 4: was a bit of Alarican.
Speaker 2: Shirley is almost seventy five now. She was only thirty
Speaker 2: five when des vanished. Her memories are fading, mainly due
Speaker 2: to mild dementia and some stress throughout a life, but
Speaker 2: some of the memories of DEAs are really clear.
Speaker 4: We've had a little hardware store, you know, it's only
Speaker 4: a probably because of a normal toilet. And yeah, he
Speaker 4: used to go after school and helped clean up the
Speaker 4: yard and things like that. It never got paid money
Speaker 4: for it, but he got other little things like if
Speaker 4: he wanted a toy from the show, or little things
Speaker 4: like rope and that he used to when people used
Speaker 4: to say, what's he rope for? What was he going
Speaker 4: to do with that? But he was less doing the kangaroos,
Speaker 4: wasn't he, we found out later on?
Speaker 5: And what would you do with the kangaroos? After he lies?
Speaker 4: I don't know, I don't want to know. I'll just
Speaker 4: leave that to everyone else's imagination. Was he a happy kid, yeah,
Speaker 4: very mischievous, cheeky.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: As an adult and when he started to get a
Speaker 5: bit older, and got out of the hardware.
Speaker 4: What was his job then, Well, mainly he was working
Speaker 4: out north for the main raged department, same as what
Speaker 4: Dad did. Dad. And apparently he got mixed up with
Speaker 4: the wrong crowd. He got into drinking before he left
Speaker 4: to go up north. He didn't drink alcohol, you know
Speaker 4: what I mean, but I think he got addicted to it.
Speaker 4: And he wasn't a nasty drunk or anything like that,
Speaker 4: but he was a big drinker. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5: And so how old was he when he went up north?
Speaker 4: I think it was seventeen, I think sixteen or seventeen.
Speaker 5: So pretty young young. Would you say you were close brothers?
Speaker 4: Yeah, very close. Yeah. He was my idol, you know,
Speaker 4: my big brother because there's only one boy in the family,
Speaker 4: and I used to look after me, you know a lot,
Speaker 4: but was joined when they were away nursing all the time,
Speaker 4: so they didn't grow up with him sort of like
Speaker 4: I did. And it was, you know, happened to put it.
Speaker 4: The big brother's not here anymore, he's gone up nort
Speaker 4: you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: So when we're talking about up north, whereabouts did he go?
Speaker 4: Palled Headland just all around that area? Arrousked about I
Speaker 4: think you'd call him.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so he'd work on.
Speaker 4: On farms and things like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Later on in life he went to the main Rage Department,
Speaker 4: working for.
Speaker 2: Them obtaining disser's worklogs from the West Australian main roads.
Speaker 2: He was stationed at a small Aboriginal outpost called Thangu,
Speaker 2: sixteen hundred kilometers north of Perth and only eighty kilometers
Speaker 2: from Broome. Thangu is a coastal homestead first established in
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty by a farmer hoping to raise cattle. Although
Speaker 2: Thangu is coastal, it's still around forty kilometers inland from
Speaker 2: any beach and so is classed as outback. Out Back
Speaker 2: Australia is some of the harshest countryside in the world.
Speaker 2: Most people are afraid of the snakes and spiders that
Speaker 2: they believe inhabit these lands, but in fact more people
Speaker 2: perish in outback Australia because of the sun, the heat
Speaker 2: and the unforgiving landscape. There is red dirt everywhere. Outside
Speaker 2: of the major towns are Aboriginal communities, mostly off the
Speaker 2: beaten track. Des was working on a road that now
Speaker 2: stretches from Perth on Australia's West coast to its northmost
Speaker 2: port Windham. The Great Northern Highway is Australia's longest road
Speaker 2: at over three two hundred kilometers. In nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 2: Dees was working on the stretch of dirt road that
Speaker 2: would eventually link Port, Headline and Broom. Temperatures in these
Speaker 2: outback areas often reach above thirty five degrees, but on
Speaker 2: the freshly latar it can get into the high forties.
Speaker 2: I think it's important to try and understand the sort
Speaker 2: of person Des was. He was a bit of a loner,
Speaker 2: being the only boy in the family. As a child,
Speaker 2: he would often find his own fun. Sometimes that fun
Speaker 2: would turn into mischief. Des wasn't afraid of being by himself,
Speaker 2: which probably led to him moving up north to work,
Speaker 2: working as part of a main roads team. The hours
Speaker 2: were long, but the money was good. From the records
Speaker 2: we received, it seemed like Des didn't have any mates
Speaker 2: as such up north. He had work colleagues, but none
Speaker 2: of those tight sort of friendships that you establish while
Speaker 2: working in a remote area for months with the same
Speaker 2: group of blokes. He was happy that way. Des didn't
Speaker 2: have a girlfriend or a wife, and from what the
Speaker 2: family remember, little romantic interest. The lifestyle working on these
Speaker 2: remote roads consists of waking up, getting trucked out to
Speaker 2: the area you're assigned to work. Then at the end
Speaker 2: of the day you get picked up and head back
Speaker 2: to camp for some tucker and a beer or two.
Speaker 2: Often you're working on your own with no one else around.
Speaker 2: That was DES's life. Before we dig into what happened
Speaker 2: on August s second, nineteen seventy nine, we have to
Speaker 2: step back over ten years and uncover what could have
Speaker 2: led to DES's disappearance. DES's older sister, Joy remembers.
Speaker 6: Nineteen sixty six, we had the car accident. Des was
Speaker 6: still in per thin and he used to come over
Speaker 6: to the hospital because I hadn't the spine broken. And
Speaker 6: he used to come over to Beat every day and
Speaker 6: see me with one of his mates, Rick older set
Speaker 6: and Rick was called up into the army, so he
Speaker 6: would have been eighteen. I was berthed by then, and
Speaker 6: Dares wanted to go too, but he wasn't called up
Speaker 6: because of medical problems and that he.
Speaker 2: Apparently had more on DES's relationship with his best mate Rick.
Speaker 2: In episode two, not only was Joy, DES's sister involved
Speaker 2: in a car crash in nineteen sixty six, but des
Speaker 2: was also involved in a car crash in the mid seventies.
Speaker 2: It is possible that alcohol played a part in his crash,
Speaker 2: although back in those days there was no random breath testing,
Speaker 2: and so it's possible that des was drink driving when
Speaker 2: he had his car accident. The details of the accident
Speaker 2: are sketchy, but what I do know is no one
Speaker 2: else was injured. Joy, Deser's sister, sheds more light on
Speaker 2: what happened. We're talking that he had a car crash
Speaker 2: and you don't remember where that was. Was he badly injured?
Speaker 6: I think he had concussion.
Speaker 2: This wouldn't be the only concussion he received just before
Speaker 2: he disappeared. There was another incident that could have led
Speaker 2: to his disappearance. We'll explore that in episode two. For now,
Speaker 2: let's mark down concussion as a possible reason for Deser's disappearance.
Speaker 2: There is a theme emerging around DES's relationship with alcohol.
Speaker 2: We heard from both his sisters that Dez had a
Speaker 2: drinking problem of sorts. This problem only really emerged when
Speaker 2: he moved up north to work. Each year in Australia,
Speaker 2: tens of thousands of people go missing loved ones that
Speaker 2: have simply up and vanished with no sight, no record
Speaker 2: of their last movements. Susie is from Leave a Light
Speaker 2: on Ink, a Facebook group that helps connect long term
Speaker 2: missing people's stories and their families. She told me what
Speaker 2: she does to help in the search for a missing person.
Speaker 7: We aim to raise awareness of long term missing persons
Speaker 7: and provide support for families suffering the ambiguous loss of
Speaker 7: their loved ones. We endeavor to try and create media
Speaker 7: publicity for long term missing persons, sus We also work
Speaker 7: alongside the Australian Federal plase ensuring that long term missing
Speaker 7: persons are listed onto their database. We also work with
Speaker 7: families to help to find answers for them for questions
Speaker 7: that they might have that they struggle to find information for. Plus,
Speaker 7: we also liaised with the families sort of as an
Speaker 7: intermediate between them and the jung FED or police and
Speaker 7: missing persons units.
Speaker 2: So there are at the moment thirty eight thousand people
Speaker 2: reported missing each year in Australia. Not of those, a
Speaker 2: small portion of them is what you call long term
Speaker 2: missing persons. What does a long term missing person mean?
Speaker 7: That they've been missing for longer than three months? And
Speaker 7: there's approximately one percent of that thirty eight thousands that
Speaker 7: go missing every year that aren't located that end up
Speaker 7: falling into that long term missing persons category. Currently, there's
Speaker 7: over two thousand, six hundreds long term missing persons in Australia.
Speaker 2: When you think about what changes a person can go
Speaker 2: through in forty years, it's almost impossible to imagine what
Speaker 2: Dees would be like now, What would he look like,
Speaker 2: what interests would he have? Dees is not alone in
Speaker 2: being missing.
Speaker 5: For forty years.
Speaker 2: Susie from Leave a Light On shares her own experience
Speaker 2: with a long term missing person.
Speaker 7: My sister Joanne was eleven years old when she was
Speaker 7: kidnapped from the Adelaide Oval in nineteen seventy three. So
Speaker 7: as a legacy to her and also as a legacy
Speaker 7: to all the other long term missing persons here in Australia,
Speaker 7: we created Leave a Lot On to help raise awareness
Speaker 7: and give supports family. I was actually born fourteen months
Speaker 7: after my sister disappeared, so I never had the opportunity
Speaker 7: to meet her. My family used to go to the
Speaker 7: football nearly every week, and this day they'd gone to
Speaker 7: the football. They always sat in the same sort of area.
Speaker 7: They'd met a lady years before and made quite good
Speaker 7: friends with her. She was there that day with her granddaughter.
Speaker 7: Her granddaughter needed to go to the toilet, so my
Speaker 7: sister offered to take her. After a few minutes, they returned,
Speaker 7: and then later in the game, Cursy, who was four
Speaker 7: years old, to go to the toilet again, so Joanne
Speaker 7: once again took her to the toilet, but unfortunately this
Speaker 7: time they didn't return. My mum, brother and dad had
Speaker 7: a bit an extensive search of the ground and unfortunately
Speaker 7: couldn't locate her. So she was reporting to think along
Speaker 7: with Percy.
Speaker 2: Since then, there's never been a sighting, never been any
Speaker 2: news about both the girls.
Speaker 7: Over the years, There's been a number of suspects that
Speaker 7: the police have investigated. Unfortunately there hasn't been enough evidence
Speaker 7: to charge anyone, and sadly there hasn't been enough evidence
Speaker 7: to locate either or Joanne. The girls were seen leaving
Speaker 7: the oval with a tall, stooped man in his late
Speaker 7: thirties and early forties. Kirsty was being carried by this
Speaker 7: gentleman and Joanne was struggling with him, pulling on his
Speaker 7: arm and quite trying to get him to drop thirsty
Speaker 7: and there were a number of witnesses that come forward
Speaker 7: to verify this information. But unfortunately the suspect for the
Speaker 7: girls have been located over the forty six years.
Speaker 2: It doesn't make it any easier. But I guess you
Speaker 2: have some knowledge around what happened because someone saw something
Speaker 2: and that the girls were taken from the oval. So
Speaker 2: what happens after that moment, it's hard to suppose and
Speaker 2: you don't want to think about, but I guess that's
Speaker 2: a little bit of information. And that's not always the
Speaker 2: case with long term missing people.
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 7: Unfortunately, there are a lot of people that go missing
Speaker 7: that seems to just vanishing sin here and nothing is seen,
Speaker 7: there's no evidence left behind, there's no information.
Speaker 2: And that's exactly what happened to Dez. He just vanished.
Speaker 2: So did he go walk about, did he want to disappear?
Speaker 2: Or is there something more sinister behind his disappearance.
Speaker 4: So this particular day, they dropped off at the certain
Speaker 4: place did he had to go to. He had his water,
Speaker 4: he had his food, dude, and they came to pick
Speaker 4: these up that afternoon. No nowhere to be found, just
Speaker 4: like someone plucked him up, you.
Speaker 2: Know, Dez had three sisters. He grew up in a
Speaker 2: small country town in Wa. He was a normal country
Speaker 2: boy who grew into a young man who liked hanging
Speaker 2: out with his mates, playing a bit of footye, and
Speaker 2: getting up to childhood mischief. His middle sister, Joy, has
Speaker 2: her memories of des in those early days living.
Speaker 5: In New York.
Speaker 8: Oh, it was great.
Speaker 6: Every year we used to get floods just about We
Speaker 6: lived on the opposite side of the river to the school,
Speaker 6: and we loved having floods because the bridges would be
Speaker 6: covered and we didn't have to go to school.
Speaker 8: That was great.
Speaker 6: Yeah, No, it was good. And we had our grandparents,
Speaker 6: my mum's parents living just out a little way out
Speaker 6: of town and with a really great joy to go out.
Speaker 4: There.
Speaker 6: Had a big well back of the house, and there's
Speaker 6: being a little boy used to like to try and
Speaker 6: climb up this windmill thing, and he would always get
Speaker 6: roused at. He still kept doing it, but he didn't
Speaker 6: do any harm as it turned out, But they were
Speaker 6: frightened that some of the boards on top of the
Speaker 6: well might have given away. Yeah, it would always make
Speaker 6: something excuse for him to come and play with us.
Speaker 6: He didn't like playing with dogs, like all boys, you know,
Speaker 6: liked playing rough games marbles and that. In fact, I
Speaker 6: can remember.
Speaker 1: I don't know how.
Speaker 6: Old I was. Theirs had the measles, and we used
Speaker 6: to go into the bedroom with in Gwin and I
Speaker 6: and play and throw around. He pushed me one day
Speaker 6: and he put his knee up and he hit me
Speaker 6: in the mouth and knocked on two front ties out.
Speaker 2: So Daz was an explorer and an adventurer. He didn't
Speaker 2: seem like he was afraid to take risks. As Darz
Speaker 2: grew older, he developed a bit of a loner mentality.
Speaker 2: He had friends, but that group of friends was small.
Speaker 2: His best friend in the early seventies was Rick. Des
Speaker 2: and Rick would hang out together and get into a
Speaker 2: bit of trouble, nothing serious, just what we'd call alarican
Speaker 2: these days. As we heard in episode one, DES's best mate,
Speaker 2: Rick was called up to Vietnam. Des wasn't because of
Speaker 2: some unconfirmed medical issues. While Rick was stationed in Vietnam,
Speaker 2: something happened, something that affected DES's emotional state that could
Speaker 2: have contributed to his disappearance in nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 6: Rick was only overseas in Vietnam for oh, just two
Speaker 6: or three months. I think it wasn't he was killed
Speaker 6: that really hit is hard, and I think that's when
Speaker 6: he started to go drinking a bit more than what
Speaker 6: he should have been.
Speaker 2: Death often has a way of triggering emotion that might
Speaker 2: not normally appear. In de Us case, it wasn't just
Speaker 2: an emotion that was triggered. It was drinking. Dez started
Speaker 2: drinking and drinking hard. Was Dez drinking to forget or
Speaker 2: drinking to dull the Paine? Whatever his reason, his family
Speaker 2: feel this may have contributed to his disappearance. At this
Speaker 2: point in the podcast, I think it's important to call
Speaker 2: out a few things. There is a certain significance with
Speaker 2: this story that I'm attached to. We will explore that
Speaker 2: in later episodes. But it's fair to say this story
Speaker 2: is not just intriguing to me. It's played a part
Speaker 2: in my life for a long time. Let's get to
Speaker 2: the disappearance. It was an evening in late June nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy nine at Thangu station in out back Western Australia.
Speaker 2: Dez had finished work on his steamroller. After working in
Speaker 2: the hot suny himself on a road stretching fifty kilometers
Speaker 2: it was an unsealed road, and Desert's roll at this
Speaker 2: time was to steam roll the road flat and from
Speaker 2: there a team would come in and lay down hot ashphalt.
Speaker 2: Then the road would be classed as sealed. You can
Speaker 2: see pictures of that red dirt that would soon become
Speaker 2: a sealed road on our website. Whereas dez dot com,
Speaker 2: Thangu's station was the meeting point for the main roads
Speaker 2: department and where workers from all over the stretch of
Speaker 2: highway were stationed. Most nights, it was the same get
Speaker 2: back from the road, have some grub in the mess hall,
Speaker 2: have some beers and hit the sack. These days, drinking
Speaker 2: while being a fly and fly at worker is not
Speaker 2: tolerated for good reason. Most fly and fly out workers
Speaker 2: are breathlyzed before they start a shift and they must
Speaker 2: have a reading of zero. In fact, most FIFO workers
Speaker 2: are not allowed to drink while they're on roster. It's
Speaker 2: only when they're on the leave that they can unwind.
Speaker 2: That's now, But in nineteen seventy nine the rules were different,
Speaker 2: mainly because there were no rules. You could get drunk
Speaker 2: head to work the next day and not be breath tested.
Speaker 4: Mom and Dad were worried about him drinking, but that's
Speaker 4: a depthural thing. All the young blokes up there, you
Speaker 4: go to work through the day. It didn't interfere with
Speaker 4: his job. They all had a beer of a night time,
Speaker 4: So how can you do you know?
Speaker 2: In June nineteen seventy nine, a few months before he
Speaker 2: went missing, Dez had finished writing a letter to his
Speaker 2: mum and dad and had decided to head into the
Speaker 2: nearest town, Derby, which was a little under forty kilometers
Speaker 2: from the station. It was a Friday night, and after
Speaker 2: a long week at work, it was finally time to
Speaker 2: unwind at about ten pm. From the records and interviews
Speaker 2: that were conducted around the time, was a fight. There
Speaker 2: is no record of who was in the fight and
Speaker 2: why it occurred, but whatever happened, it didn't end well
Speaker 2: for des He suffered a cut on the head, a
Speaker 2: cut so bad he needed to be taken to Derby Hospital.
Speaker 2: This head knock is well documented in the police reports
Speaker 2: back from nineteen seventy nine. The detective in charge back
Speaker 2: then is now eighty two years old and retired. He
Speaker 2: put us in touch with the current detective in charge
Speaker 2: of missing Persons in wa Detective Sergeant Jude Sevright, she
Speaker 2: shared some information from his missing person's file.
Speaker 8: A missing person's reports was compiled by a Sergeant Pethick
Speaker 8: who was attached to Brim Police station at the time,
Speaker 8: and his inquiries has shown that before Des went missing,
Speaker 8: he was apparently suffering from quite terrible headaches, so the
Speaker 8: sergeants contacted Broom Hospital and he was advised that back
Speaker 8: on the twenty third of June, in only seventy nine,
Speaker 8: that Des was treated by a doctor for an injury
Speaker 8: to his right temple, which according to the notes stated
Speaker 8: that he received in a fight, and the next ray
Speaker 8: was taken at the time, but it revealed that there
Speaker 8: wasn't It was negative for any fractures and he received
Speaker 8: no further treatment. From the notes that I'm being made
Speaker 8: aware of, he was advised to return to the hospital
Speaker 8: for follow up, but I don't believe that Des did
Speaker 8: return to the hospital following that. Another check with Derby
Speaker 8: Hospital revealed that he was treated there on the twenty
Speaker 8: first of the next month in July and again suffering
Speaker 8: from headaches and apparently had some sort of infected lesion
Speaker 8: on his right scalp through which he was treated with
Speaker 8: antibiotics and it was quested to return to the hospital
Speaker 8: in a few days. From my understanding, he didn't return.
Speaker 2: It's interesting that there's a month between him first presenting
Speaker 2: to Broome Hospital on the twenty third of June in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy nine and then presenting again in Derby a
Speaker 2: month later with a similar sort of area and this
Speaker 2: was back from that fight that happened around the June
Speaker 2: time in seventy nine.
Speaker 8: Yeah, he seems to be having this continuing similar symptoms
Speaker 8: that he's presenting for. And then from what I understand,
Speaker 8: on the first of August in nineteen seventy nine, he
Speaker 8: was so unwell from his headaches that he was unable
Speaker 8: to tend to work, so he remained at the camp
Speaker 8: all that day. And it's also believe that he hasn't
Speaker 8: around that time, he wasn't eating well. I'm assuming this
Speaker 8: is to do with the fact that he wasn't well
Speaker 8: and it maybe maybe to do with what you've mentioned
Speaker 8: or related to the headache symptoms.
Speaker 2: Is there any extra detail on the fight, because Frank Carr,
Speaker 2: Desmond's dad, said that a chair fell on him and
Speaker 2: this is how Frank recounts the story.
Speaker 8: I read that in the newspaper article, but I'm not
Speaker 8: sure where that information has come from. It's not I
Speaker 8: don't have any other information about that in the file.
Speaker 2: So the police report is that the reason that he
Speaker 2: had a bump on the head was not from a chair,
Speaker 2: but from a fight.
Speaker 8: That's what's written in the report here.
Speaker 2: What is the most interesting here is that this detail
Speaker 2: of the fight is different than what the family believe
Speaker 2: happened to him and how he got a bump on
Speaker 2: the head, a bump bad enough to be sent to
Speaker 2: hospital twice in as many months. On August second, nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy nine, although still not feeling one hundred percent, des
Speaker 2: was picked up from the camp along with the other workers.
Speaker 2: He had not complained of any headaches on the morning.
Speaker 2: He was suffering mild diarrhea from the earlier in fact,
Speaker 2: from the bump on the head. However, he still went
Speaker 2: out to work on the roller. Each workout would be
Speaker 2: dropped off at a designated machine on the highway. Today,
Speaker 2: Dez was driving a roller. It was just him on
Speaker 2: a stretch of road that was around ten kilometers ten
Speaker 2: kilometers of highway with just Dez and his roller with him.
Speaker 2: On that day. He had his lunch packed and a
Speaker 2: blue water bottle, the kind that was made of foam.
Speaker 2: He was wearing black shorts, a red shirt, and brown
Speaker 2: boots with a bucket hat. The time was eight thirty am.
Speaker 2: At three pm that same day, the truck that dropped
Speaker 2: Dez off in the morning had driven past him to
Speaker 2: head out to pick up the other workers from a
Speaker 2: further post, and they saw him working on the roller.
Speaker 2: By four pm, when the truck returned to pick him up,
Speaker 2: des had disappeared. That's exactly how Shirley, his little sister,
Speaker 2: remembers it.
Speaker 4: Because he's worked for the main roads department. They dropped
Speaker 4: them off of the morning at a certain place with
Speaker 4: all their water and their food and that for the day.
Speaker 4: So this particular day, they dropped Theirs off at a
Speaker 4: certain place that he had to go to. He had
Speaker 4: his water, he had his food, he had his boots,
Speaker 4: and that on dropped him off, went down further and
Speaker 4: dropped other people off.
Speaker 5: You know they do that.
Speaker 4: I think it's one or two people, but Theirs was
Speaker 4: the only one by himself, and they did that and
Speaker 4: just went back to their camp. When they came to
Speaker 4: pick Theirs up, that night, all that afternoon, no nowhere
Speaker 4: to be found, just like someone plucked him up. You know,
Speaker 4: steam roll was still running on the side of the
Speaker 4: road that had been on that was the actual motor
Speaker 4: was still going. Then they thought, well, okay, he's going
Speaker 4: to be here somewhere.
Speaker 2: It's not often that something just ups and vanishes on
Speaker 2: a deserted stretch of road with no food, no water,
Speaker 2: no shelter, and thirty kilometers from the closest camp. But
Speaker 2: that's what happened to Daz.
Speaker 4: What they told us that he'd probably wanted to go
Speaker 4: to the toilet or something to relieve himself. So he's
Speaker 4: probably just walked over in the bush and didn't come back.
Speaker 4: He the police and that were called straightaway. They were
Speaker 4: there within an hour. They looked everywhere, so many kilometers
Speaker 4: around that area. They just didn't look at that certain place.
Speaker 4: They went inland, they went on the other side of
Speaker 4: the road, and I think there was seventeen of them
Speaker 4: to look at the area where the last time he
Speaker 4: was seen, and nobody found anything. No tracks, there was
Speaker 4: no you know, like he had big boots in that
Speaker 4: on there's no tracks at all. If they had a band,
Speaker 4: we probably would have found him, even the manager or
Speaker 4: whatever he said. He said, he's like something's pucked him
Speaker 4: off them upstairs. Someone's just come down and pull him up.
Speaker 4: And because that was a silly thing, we didn't believe
Speaker 4: any of that. You know, that doesn't happen. It just
Speaker 4: doesn't happen. But as the years went on, we thought, well,
Speaker 4: if he's not deceased under a bush or something like that,
Speaker 4: where's the other place. If you go.
Speaker 2: You might notice there are some gaps when the exact
Speaker 2: detail of what the family remember and what was actually
Speaker 2: documented in the police report over forty years ago. Detective
Speaker 2: Sergeant Jude Severright explains the official report.
Speaker 8: From what I understand from the report, he went to
Speaker 8: work as usual on the second from information from a
Speaker 8: colleague that he was not feeling well. He interacted with
Speaker 8: his colleagues at morning tea time, spoke to several different persons.
Speaker 8: He went back to the camp at lunchtime, though he
Speaker 8: did not eat. From what I understand, and at about
Speaker 8: two pm that day in the report it meant is
Speaker 8: that he spoke to someone I'm not sure who that's
Speaker 8: someone is and said I'll be back at the camp
Speaker 8: in two hours and then at three pm, he was
Speaker 8: working with four other persons from what I understand, didn't
Speaker 8: speak to them at that time. I don't know why.
Speaker 8: That's not elaborated in the report. They left him to
Speaker 8: continue with his work the ruler. And then at four
Speaker 8: pm that day, when our vehicles returned to the site
Speaker 8: where Dez was working to collect him, he wasn't there.
Speaker 8: It's just his roller parked in the middle of the road.
Speaker 2: So that means there's a period of an hour from
Speaker 2: three pm to four pm where essentially he's gone missing.
Speaker 8: That's what I understand.
Speaker 2: Yes, and so the gentlemen that were working with him
Speaker 2: at the time, did they notice anything, or is there
Speaker 2: anything in the reports about how he was feeling, or
Speaker 2: whether he was whether he was himself and lucid, or
Speaker 2: is there any information around what his state was that afternoon.
Speaker 8: There is a comment in the report that he appeared
Speaker 8: to be becoming a bit more irrational and abnormal. It's
Speaker 8: not elaborated on, so I don't know what that actually means.
Speaker 8: But then also in contradiction to that, to some degree,
Speaker 8: apparently that day when he was speaking to certain people,
Speaker 8: he seemed okay. So it's not a definitive either way
Speaker 8: as to as to exactly how he was feeling.
Speaker 2: So des may have been frazzled or a little irrational
Speaker 2: on the day he went missing. However, if it just
Speaker 2: walked off, surely if that had happened, there would be
Speaker 2: a trace or a body or footprints. Remember, it wasn't
Speaker 2: yet a sealed road des was working on. It was
Speaker 2: a red dirt sand road, which would leave footprints if
Speaker 2: someone had just walked off. To see pictures of the
Speaker 2: area surrounding Deser's disappearance, head to our website. Whereas dez
Speaker 2: dot com, no tracks and no traces of des were
Speaker 2: ever found. You can only imagine how Deser's mum and
Speaker 2: dad would feel once they learned of his disappearance. Both Shirley,
Speaker 2: DES's younger sister, and Enjoy, his older sister, have different
Speaker 2: accounts of how they found out their brother was missing.
Speaker 4: I think his name was Colin, a good friend of Deser's.
Speaker 4: He came around one day. Mum and dad were at
Speaker 4: the back. Dad was pruning some trees there. He walked in,
Speaker 4: walked out to Mum and dad, and then the next
Speaker 4: minute I heard screams and I thought, oh, what's that?
Speaker 4: So I raced around there. I was only twenty something,
Speaker 4: and that he told us that Desert God missing, that
Speaker 4: nobody knew where he was, nobody could find him, and
Speaker 4: it just crumbled my mum and dad as well. But
Speaker 4: we couldn't get any answers from and nobody knew anything
Speaker 4: the main roads department. I mean they looked for him.
Speaker 1: They did.
Speaker 2: That's Shirley's version of how they found out, but over
Speaker 2: forty years memories fade Joy had a different version of events.
Speaker 6: I think the police came up and told us that
Speaker 6: he went missing, but I can't really recall because it
Speaker 6: was about about eleven o'clock at night, I think when
Speaker 6: they came up and told us. So we just packed
Speaker 6: up everything then and went straight off to Perth. And
Speaker 6: we got up there and apparently a mum and dad
Speaker 6: heard about it. The start off with from a friend
Speaker 6: of Desert's up there wanting to know if you know
Speaker 6: they'd heard from Dead because they'd found his greater and
Speaker 6: that they're still running at the site of where he
Speaker 6: was working. That's what I understand.
Speaker 2: While researching this story, I was able to obtain an
Speaker 2: ABC special on missing persons back from nineteen eighty one.
Speaker 2: In this special, DES's dad, Frank and Dolly talk about
Speaker 2: Dez and his disappearance.
Speaker 1: He couldn't believe. I think that he was working on
Speaker 1: a roll and with these infection that he had on
Speaker 1: his head and with his severe headaches. He was getting
Speaker 1: given any Andy brydeck for the infection. He got diarrhea
Speaker 1: about it and what he's continuing out with wall Com.
Speaker 1: The diarrhea when he got back on his machine grounded
Speaker 1: the noise and the wrap around the vibrats and things
Speaker 1: couldn't stand. He got off the machine and went and
Speaker 1: laid in the bush. Probably would have gone a flat
Speaker 1: when he woke up, and nobody about. I would probably
Speaker 1: been just about on dark. And we think, and the
Speaker 1: doctor's seek in Derby that he could have gone to
Speaker 1: Nami or lost his temples and he's going out in
Speaker 1: the road and someone and I think this is what
Speaker 1: I believe is true, is that someone's picking him. You know.
Speaker 1: The thing is that has he gone off or has
Speaker 1: he gone out? We don't, Well, it's not a day
Speaker 1: Gay's pass and I don't think of him. I often
Speaker 1: get his faders out and he's not a name that
Speaker 1: I don't think about.
Speaker 2: Although almost forty years ago. You can hear the hope
Speaker 2: in Frank and Dolly's voice, hoping that someone knows something,
Speaker 2: that maybe he just got in someone's car and got
Speaker 2: a lift somewhere. Maybe he's still out there somewhere living
Speaker 2: a new life with no real memory of the family
Speaker 2: and the life he left behind. This hope is something Joy,
Speaker 2: Frank's daughter, also remembered, and it eventually led to Frank's death.
Speaker 6: Oh horrified. Dad was beside himself and I still reckon
Speaker 6: that killed Mum and Dad. You know that the shock
Speaker 6: of it all. Had been up there with Gwynn and
Speaker 6: they helped in the search, and I think they even
Speaker 6: went up in the plane to search because the main
Speaker 6: roads people didn't sort of go looking straight away because
Speaker 6: his notre of his grader was still running when he
Speaker 6: went off into the bush, and they just thought he
Speaker 6: went off into the bush to relieve himself. And they
Speaker 6: knocked off on the Friday and went back to their
Speaker 6: huts and things, And when there's hadn't returned, somebody went
Speaker 6: out looking for him. I gather, but there's no sign
Speaker 6: of him, but his greater were still there, and I
Speaker 6: think that's probably when they alerted the police. You know,
Speaker 6: it was all very suss to start with, we thought,
Speaker 6: not knowing what was going on, But after its Dad
Speaker 6: and Gwen came back. We stayed in Perth and Dad
Speaker 6: was going around everywhere, putting flyers and that around them
Speaker 6: the different areas if anyone saw him, and then Gwen
Speaker 6: suggested we bring mom and Dad down here. It's only
Speaker 6: since Uncle Ron went that I've realized this that we
Speaker 6: should have left them there to deal.
Speaker 7: With it all.
Speaker 6: Because when we were here, every time our phone rang
Speaker 6: that Ron was on ambulance call as well as water
Speaker 6: authority call out. And every time the phone ring, whether
Speaker 6: it be day or night, Dad would say, I'll answer that.
Speaker 6: That'll be for me. About dis what is.
Speaker 2: Clear about Dez and his relationship with his family is
Speaker 2: that he loved them and he missed them. Des wasn't
Speaker 2: much of a writer, but as part of the search
Speaker 2: for Dez, the family sent a copy of a letter
Speaker 2: Des wrote in June nineteen seventy nine. It turns out
Speaker 2: this was the day of his fight and consequence stayed hospital.
Speaker 2: This note was given to police in nineteen eighty eight
Speaker 2: as proof of DES's handwriting by his sister gwen DES's
Speaker 2: mum Dolly starts reading the letter, Dear.
Speaker 4: Mum and Dad, don't go shop. Well, as I finally
Speaker 4: got around to writing, how is everyone down that way
Speaker 4: or keeping okay?
Speaker 3: I hope sorry to hear that you cut the holidays short,
Speaker 3: but I guess that's the way things turn out. Please
Speaker 3: excuse the writing paper, but as I have nothing else
Speaker 3: at the moment, it will have to do. I'm working
Speaker 3: on the MRD now, not a bad job, but long hours.
Speaker 3: It's easy enough. I'm the th man. Dad will explain
Speaker 3: what that means. We're out at Thangu Camp on the
Speaker 3: Headland to Broom Road and about eighty k's from Broom,
Speaker 3: so if I stick it out until next Christmas shall
Speaker 3: definitely be down this year. We're getting some funny weather
Speaker 3: up here at the moment. Hot one day, cold the
Speaker 3: next and rain. I see it's been a bit cool
Speaker 3: down that way too. Well, everybody seems okay up this way,
Speaker 3: except for a few sniffles, etc. Seeing as how I
Speaker 3: have a bit of time up my sleeve, shall endeavor
Speaker 3: to write Timmy's sister too, only short ones, though, like
Speaker 3: this will be Well, it's Friday now, I'm trying to
Speaker 3: make my mind up to go to Derby or Broom.
Speaker 3: I guess it will be Derby. Well, not much else
Speaker 3: at the moment. I shall try to write more often.
Speaker 3: So for now that's all, as I've run out of space,
Speaker 3: excuses excuses. Love Dez.
Speaker 2: As you can tell from the tone of his letter,
Speaker 2: dares knew that his family missed him, and that he
Speaker 2: was terrible at keeping in touch with both his mum
Speaker 2: and dad, but also his three sisters. He talks of
Speaker 2: heading to Broom or Derby. That Friday night he ended
Speaker 2: up in Derby, and that's the night he got in
Speaker 2: a fight, was knocked on the head and ended up
Speaker 2: in hospital. This eventually could have been the cause of
Speaker 2: his disappearance. He promises to write more often, and also
Speaker 2: that he'd be home for Christmas in nineteen seventy nine
Speaker 2: and to write to his sisters Gwen, Joy and Shirley.
Speaker 2: They never heard from him or saw him again. Dez
Speaker 2: was definitely thinking about coming back to be with his family.
Speaker 2: He'd recently bought a new car and a dog, and
Speaker 2: already purchased a new set of clothes that he was
Speaker 2: saving up to wear to see the family At Christmas.
Speaker 2: The police record and a few coworker interviews at the
Speaker 2: time state that Dez had some alcohol issues. There were
Speaker 2: also other interactions with police that Dez had nothing serious,
Speaker 2: but all involved alcohol, so it would be fair to
Speaker 2: say that Des liked to drink. DES's drinking is another
Speaker 2: theory about why he went missing his sister Shirley.
Speaker 4: Unfortunately, he was a heavy drinker and people just thought
Speaker 4: that he'd just got a bit, maybe got drunk out
Speaker 4: there and just went for a walk in the bush
Speaker 4: and got lost. But that proved later on when they
Speaker 4: did all the searchers that there was no tracks, there
Speaker 4: was nothing. Someone from upstairs has just plucked enough.
Speaker 2: When a family member goes missing, it's not just the
Speaker 2: immediate family that's impacted. Susie from Leave a Light on Ink,
Speaker 2: a Facebook group that helps track down long term missing
Speaker 2: people across Australia, talks about the effect it has on
Speaker 2: the whole family for generations to come.
Speaker 7: Well, you can't really grieve, but there's there's nowhere that
Speaker 7: you can can go to lay flowers or say you're
Speaker 7: good buyers like your bush. If someone passes away, you
Speaker 7: can go to the cemetery and you can you can
Speaker 7: properly grieve and say say you goodbye and come to
Speaker 7: groups with it and move on in life. Whereas when
Speaker 7: you've got a missing person your whole life it's like
Speaker 7: a living nightmare, and you turn out that it's like
Speaker 7: being in limbos. There's no way of moving on because
Speaker 7: you don't know whether they're alive, whether they're dead, whether
Speaker 7: they're okay, whether they've got mental health issues and they
Speaker 7: need support. It's just so much of the unknowing, and
Speaker 7: that's what families find so incredibly difficult to deal with.
Speaker 2: With your sisters, Joanne go and missing, how has that
Speaker 2: affected your life? And then if you have children, your
Speaker 2: parenting style and their life.
Speaker 7: Well, it affected me great. But I didn't have the
Speaker 7: independence and freedom that so many other children of my
Speaker 7: same age growing up with. I couldn't go to friends places,
Speaker 7: or don't ride my bike down the street, or go
Speaker 7: and play at the neighbors unless my mum or my
Speaker 7: brother supervising me. I found it incredibly difficult to go
Speaker 7: and do anything on my own, and I'm finding that
Speaker 7: I do the same with my daughter. I worry, you know,
Speaker 7: if I can't see her with wing the supermarket and
Speaker 7: you know if she tells me that she'll be a
Speaker 7: few minutes and she's longer than a few minutes, I
Speaker 7: instantly start to worry. And it's it's something that it's
Speaker 7: this instinct you can't help but panic because you think
Speaker 7: to yourself, is it going to happen all over again?
Speaker 7: And that's that's the concern, especially with a kidnapping things,
Speaker 7: But in general, when someone goes missing, it's not just
Speaker 7: the immediate family, but future generations to come because that
Speaker 7: person is a part of your family and you talk
Speaker 7: about them, so the next generation they have questions they
Speaker 7: want to ask as well, and unfortunately it doesn't stop
Speaker 7: just for the immediate family.
Speaker 2: In the next episode, you'll hear two other theories of
Speaker 2: Desert's disappearance. Both are far fetched, both have never been substantiated,
Speaker 2: and both are theories that some of the family believed
Speaker 2: for a good portion of time.
Speaker 4: The UFOs that's well that my old sister Gwynn, she
Speaker 4: believed in that There's was absolutely adamant that this light,
Speaker 4: no car, no nothing, just this great big light was
Speaker 4: following him along the road.
Speaker 2: It's true to say, when left with no hope and
Speaker 2: no answers, you clutch at Anything. Thanks for listening to
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