Australian Missing Persons Register 
 

        Welcome to Australian Missing Persons Register. I created this website five years ago to bring awareness of missing persons to the public and I have been overwhelmed with the positive response I have had from the families and friends of the Missing and also Police and media agencies.

My aim is to provide information about missing persons from every State and Territory in Australia, no matter how long they have been missing, and the ultimate aim of course is to find these people and bring peace to, and possibly reunite the families. I provide emotional support and practical help wherever possible to the friends and families of the Missing.

There is absolutely NO charge or fee to anyone for publication of missing persons details or messages. The work I have done is entirely voluntary. I receive no funding from anyone for this work.

I list all missing persons, from decades ago to people reported missing today.

If you have any information about any of the cases listed on the site please call Crimestoppers on 1800 333 000 - going missing is NOT a crime but the Crimestoppers number puts you through to Police who are ready to help locate the person and make sure they are safe and well.

To contact me - austmissingpersons@supernerd.com.au

Nicole@australianmissingpersonsregister.com

Phone - 0438 900 861       

*I will answer EVERY e mail that is sent to me but note if you have a Hotmail or Yahoo account then your system may put my reply into your spam or trash folder if it doesn't recognise my e mail address so please check. Please forgive any delay in reply but I do this work on my own and am usually pretty swamped with new cases and other mail, and my own life. I WILL get back to you though. No one is ignored.

                                     *****************************************************************************

February 8th 2010 -

I feel I need to write something about the 1 year anniversary of the Black Saturday fires. I think it would be good for me to try and put it into words; I didn't think I had any tears left after last year but still they come.

It doesn't feel like a year to me, because it hasn't been. As recently as a week or so ago I was adjusting an error on the photo tribute page that someone pointed out to me, and some of the families I met during that time have kept in regular contact with me. Roma, who was a tower of strength at that time, rang me on Christmas Day and I got a text from Lachlan just a few weeks ago too. Another lady who lost her brother talks to me every couple of months. It's hard to let go, and why should we? I have not put this behind me, because I can't. If you are a regular reader of this site you will know what I did this time last year, if you are new then let me try and explain.

The first e mail came on the Saturday night. A lady could not find her teenage daughter and she was most insistent that it was urgent, because she had been travelling to Wandong, a place I had never heard of. I looked it up and it was in country Victoria and I assumed it might be near where I had heard on the news they'd had a bit of a bushfire. We just didn't know at that time what had happened.

From that first e mail, they started to slowly but surely trickle in then build up speed. I realised I had to start a page on the website for those searching for people missing after the fire, and from then on it became massive. I was online at 6am and I listed literally thousands of requests for information. I worked sometimes until 1am, and I was able to start a second page listing those who were safe. The truly gut wrenching thing was when the same names kept coming up again and again from people looking for loved ones and you realised they were gone, that a point came where if that person was able to contact their sister or mum or husband, that they would have. And I kept typing those names over and over in the desperate hope that someone would say yes, I am here at a church hall in Whittlesea with them, they are safe. But they usually didn't. In the days that followed, which became a bit of a blur, the death toll was mentioned at a tragic 50 and I told people it was absolutely going to go much, much higher as I had so many missing.

It went on for months. I remember going to the movies with friends a couple of weeks later, the first time I had left the house in days. In the car on the way I got a call from the family of a lady still missing and I was answering some questions about identifying burned remains, and I didn't realise until I looked up and saw the expressions of horror on the faces of my friends as they listened to my side of the call what a strange life I lead, how surreal.

I got to know these people without ever having met them, and there were chuckles despite the horror. I learned about that woman who was having an affair with that bloke and so she might have been at his house when the fire started, and I made one lady laugh when I said the Mountain was worse than Days of Our Lives. There was one bloke who survived the fire only to learn his girlfriend had left him, and he became suicidal. Those who lost so many animals, those who died themselves trying to get horses and dogs out. So many times I heard "She wouldn't have left the horses" and she didn't, she died with them. The family who got their beloved huskies into the dog trailer but the fire got them all in the driveway. The lovely shy lady who loved her English china so much, they found the box of plates in the front seat of the car and there she was, she died there too. The lady who I will never forget, looking for her elderly Mum, we didn't know for sure what had happened for a long time, she was with her little dog in the end, I think I asked a policeman who had been up walking the streets checking the houses for the dead and he confirmed how many had died on that road. She never made it to the oval, we don't know why, she should have left early, she was going to.....I had a call from a man whose teenage son lived with his Mum right in the fire zone. They had not been able to contact any of them. I made so many phone calls, rang so many people and then as I was ringing the last number I had been given a voice answered and it was him, the son - he was fine. I think I burst into tears and he was a little bewildered why this strange woman not only had his mobile number but was crying on the phone to him, but eventually he understood and then told me his story about how he almost didn't make it, how he and his teenage mates managed to save his mum's house. I had messages that Macka, Thommo, Westie and Bull were safe and well and I had to find out who they actually were :) People would ask if "the little old coffee shop had burned down", and I could usually find someone to answer the questions.

I took many calls from Police trying to locate people and I was able to give them contact numbers of people who could confirm they were safe. I work with Police all the time but this was different, what they went through and saw in those days will haunt them forever and I hope they are able to talk about it when they need to. The Police and Firies are the absolute heroes of this story, along with every brave person who saved a life or fought to.

I was able to make some great phone calls, to the UK, New Zealand, USA, letting people know their aunties and uncles and daughters and friends were safe. I also had to make some agonising decisions about something that was none of my business......when I know that someone has died, because their friend or relative has told me and I have someone else asking about that person, do I tell them? Or do I force the survivors and families to have to tell yet another person about the death? Do I do it? So I did it, too many times to count, and it ripped me apart. But every single time those people were grateful, and thanked me, for not making them wait a second longer to know. I was able to put some friends in touch with other friends of those deceased, so they could grieve together and exchange memories, and information about funerals. I was contacted at one point by a man's workplace wanting to know what to do with all his belongings...I was able to find a relative for them also.

I got to know some incredible people who will stay in my heart forever. Roma, who loves Kinglake so deeply, lost her close friend but threw herself into the effort to find people and whenever I was stumped, she found the answer. Wendy, worked with me for hours and hours on the list of those lost, she was incredible as we ploughed through that horrific task. It was very important to her to get all the details right about who it was and where they died, and she was fantastic. Monique was also able to answer so many questions for me and we were a support for one another for many months. Davina, with an extra special request. Karen, you were fantastic also in answering so many of my questions and you made life bearable for me for many days :)   Jannene, who was looking for a missing family with I think about 4 kids, we were so scared for a long time they didn't make it but they were found safe. I just looked back on her e mail and she said "If the news is bad, are you in a position to let us know? Because we know where they lived and we know they were in direct line of the fire and that they only had one way out, which also put them in direct line of the flames" I said yes, I would let them know, even if the news was bad.

So many others, I remember you all and all your wonderful help - THANK YOU.

John Wilson and his wife Rosalie made it out of Marysville but lost their home. My first message from John was dated the 9th, and from that time on we worked constantly making extensive lists of those missing, located and deceased from Marysville. After he had recovered a bit we were joined by Marysville doctor Lachlan Fraser, who had fled his burning home to Marysville oval, stopping on the way down to help people and then spending all night tending the wounded despite being injured himself. John's spreadsheet of the victims changed constantly as we found more people, added people, removed people who were not in town that day and eventually the Police, Red Cross and the media were using the data. We managed to track down people with as little information as "Carol from the post office", or "The lady with the hat who walks her dog round the golf course" and "that lovely Asian lady who lives up that road". 

I have 1093 e mails saved in my folders about the bushfires. The website at that time had so many hits it came within a whisker of crashing, I think it was about 80,000 visitors a day. It has gone on all year, with people still unable to find those who became homeless and moved, those who just want to talk about it, sometimes those giving me one more tragic name to add to the list of those lost, or to give me a new photo, or to make a correction to something the media got wrong. Via Facebook I have connected with many more, and united it seems easier somehow.

It has not been a year since it happened, for me it continues to happen, it's here all the time. It's helped to write this out, because I have been carrying it around with me like a lead weight, a stone in my heart that I have tried to ignore. But it's time to take the stone out and lay it down, something that won't go away but should not be ignored. Instead, we honour those fallen, those who fought, those who continue to fight and those who live on.