Veteran Australian bush tracker Jake Cassar surveys the sprawling bushland that appears to glow in the evening light. He inches forward among the dense ferns in the park on the outskirts of the historic Australian gold-mining town, gaze immersed in the earth.
“As a tracker, I can pick up where people have and haven’t been,” he says.
“There’s many areas here that haven’t been searched.”
It is the first time Cassar, involved in several high-profile missing-person cases in Australia, has visited Ballarat, a 90-minute drive north-west of Melbourne. His arrival this week, funded by community members, sparked hope in a town gripped by the disappearance of local woman Samantha Murphy.
Murphy, a mother of three, vanished almost three weeks ago.
She was last seen on Sunday 4 February about 7am, captured on CCTV footage in her family home’s driveway. That morning, while the town was tipped to swelter through a 36C day, Murphy – 51 and a keen runner – had told friends she planned to run in the nearby Woowookarung regional park, known by locals as the Canadian forest. She hasn’t been seen since.
Her case, among almost 40,000 missing person reports each year in Australia, has captivated and troubled the nation.
A week after she disappeared, the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said his thoughts were with her family as he acknowledged it was a difficult time.
Amid the groundswell of community support for her family and national fascination, Murphy’s case has also seen psychics, armchair detectives and online sleuths create and fuel theories about how the Ballarat woman vanished.
The search for answers
Just days after Cassar arrived in Ballarat, police announced what was described in frenzied media reporting as a “breakthrough”. They suspect “one or more” parties were involved in her disappearance, and had new information about her movements.
Victoria police say it is “very doubtful” she is still alive, amid a new targeted ground search at a specific location on the outskirts of town, driven by mobile phone data detectives aren’t keen to elaborate on.
They believe Murphy left her house on foot and headed to Woowookarung, where she ran before making her way to the Mount Clear area, about 7km south of her family’s property, where they launched a new search on Friday.
It came nearly a fortnight after their initial ground search was wound back.
Acting Det Supt Mark Hatt says that while the area had previously been extensively searched, they are looking for small items that may have been missed and “intricate details” of what occurred on 4 February.
“We’re absolutely looking for a phone, we haven’t yet found that,” he says. “We’re looking for a body.”
Police will also investigate the possibility Murphy was removed from the local area.
‘So many question marks’
Until Friday, police released little information since her family sounded the alarm when Murphy did not attend a planned brunch. A still image – showing her in a brown- or maroon-coloured running singlet and black leggings outside her home that morning – was among the few pieces of evidence released.
Yet amid all the speculation, mystery and developments, Ballarat locals have combed through bushland, walking the network of gravel road and walking tracks, in the hopes of finding any clues to help explain what has happened to Murphy.
A group of volunteers have banded together, creating the social media group “Ground Crew” to connect people eager to help search for her. The group is behind a large-scale community search on Saturday that plans to scour through designated bushland areas near the Murphy family’s home.
In the group are friends of the Murphys and locals who remember spotting her on her regular walks through the bushland.
“She said hello to everybody. Everyone in the area knew her,” says Ballarat resident Matthew Kingsley, who has searched for Murphy over several days.
He says Ballarat has maintained a small-town feel, despite being Victoria’s third-largest city. “Everyone seems to know everyone here. People are always trying to help each other. I want to help my community find her.”
Ballarat woman Tori Baxter, organiser of the Ground Crew group, says she is driven to find answers for Murphy’s children, despite not knowing her personally.
Days after the disappearance, Murphy’s eldest daughter, Jess, issued a teary plea, saying: “We need you at home with us.”
“No one wants to see a heartbroken daughter of a missing woman not get answers,” Baxter says.
“The fact that she has just vanished into thin air, there are so many question marks.”
Baxter hopes Saturday’s search will help. “If we just find one thing that helps authorities, that means our efforts were worthwhile.”
Ballarat residents describe Murphy, who runs a local panel-beating business with her husband, as well-known and respected.
On Wednesday evening, Cassar, a bushcraft teacher involved in the 2014 search for missing boy William Tyrell, met with a dozen community members at a Ballarat pub to brainstorm the search strategy for Saturday and share tracking tips.
Missing person flyers are handed around to distribute. Cassar instructs the group to zigzag through the forest, always keeping other volunteers in sight to avoid getting lost.
He tells the group to draw on all of their senses as they walk through the bush, and stresses “anything you can find” that can assist the investigation to shed light on Murphy’s whereabouts.
The Ground Crew group will compile a map to display designated areas for the search to cover.
Wendy Jagger, who lives near the Murphys’ home, attended the meeting on Wednesday and plans to join the search on Saturday.
“I just felt that part of being part of the community is to get in there and do what you can to find her,” she says.
“It feels too close to home for a lot of people.”
Cassar says he has been struck by the number of locals willing to support the search effort.
“It’s a good community of Aussie battlers.”
