The enclosed rainforest ravine of the Arthur River below Philosopher Falls.

I write on 17 June 2024 …. to date, any whereabouts of missing Belgian visitor Celine Cremer’s location today is no closer to closure than it was one year earlier.

The Tasmanian Police and SES have drawn a blank, and it seems unlikely they will reconvene further ground searching until more information comes to hand.

Intermittently over a few months since June last year I searched a broad area of the region extensively outside Celine’s last known location. Beyond the gorge and downstream search, I decided to undertake a perimeter search in looking for signs of activity as I was confident that if Celine had moved from open forest into the dense horizontal forest I may locate her movements, and then know in which direction she was heading.

Numerous weeks after the organised search began, the Tasmanian Police had acquired phone ping locations from Celine’s mobile that was active for several days, yet an extensive search of that area by them failed to find a single shred of evidence of her activity; it seems the searchers were not actively looking for tracks or movements.

Subsequently no information of these phone ping locations was imparted to me, and by the time I visited where I had speculated they had been looking, all I saw was searcher tracks everywhere throughout the area.

I began other investigations elsewhere based on nothing but possibilities.

Two months later when I returned downstream from the gorge below the falls, I located an inconclusive dual shoe print. There were no other signs of movement beyond what seemed like wallaby movements a bit further downstream, and another depression across the river heading south uphill.

Four months after the search began, I returned to the same area north of Seven Mile Creek and located two more movements, including a deeper print into mud. I was yet to be convinced this was evidence as they were leading nowhere except back towards the river, and to reach that point Celine would have had to cross Seven Mile Creek and head southeast until she entered a barrier of horizontal forest.

I remain convinced that Celine would have been reluctant to enter the dense forest, or that she had dropped off steeply down the track to the ravine. At that time the most likely scenario seemed that Celine followed the water race track north towards the Magnet reservoir.

Despite my extensive search in that broader Magnet Dam area early on in my searching, I was later informed that the Police and SES had subsequently gone partly over the areas where I had been.

This unfortunately was the pattern of the entire search where many continued to look in areas I had already searched because nobody wanted to communicate with me.

Some months later when I finally had correspondence with Celine’s family, I was provided some compelling information about phone ping location points. It seems that Celine’s last know position was on the water race track at 4.19pm. Sunset that evening was at 4.42pm, which means Celine was essentially in darkness in that dense forest at 4.19 and most likely spent the night at that location. The night time temperature on June 17th was unusually mild for winter which was seemingly survivable if well-clothed.

Because no evidence was found of Celine’s activity at these ping locations it indicates either she had moved on to where there was no phone reception, or the phone ping locations are inaccurate. This doesn’t account for, or explain why, more phone pings were recorded until the 20th of June that were alternating from two different locations?

The Cremer family became very frustrated that no evidence of her whereabouts had been confirmed so they hired a private investigator to dig deeper. Some months later I had a phone conversation with the investigator and he revealed that he obtained more accurate information regarding Celine’s phone ping locations, and that he had accessed her google account to locate raw files.

From that information the investigator had concluded that Celine was actually heading south in the correct direction towards the car park, but still off track. This is contrary to the belief of the police where they focused on her heading north towards Magnet Dam. Either way Celine ran out of daylight time so wouldn’t have gone very far.

As it may have eventuated, Celine could have been closer to retuning to safety than thought, and all that outlying searching was in vain. To date I still have not been given any substantial details of Celine’s phone locations and times, which would have informed me exactly of her movements and probable direction.

It seems many sincerely wanted to find her, though reluctant to share information with me that may finally locate Celine. In my opinion this search has been like no other I’ve been involved in, and the result speaks for itself!

Given that the private investigator’s research is accurate then there is only one area nearby that has not been fully explored. There are many questions remaining unanswered, and the obvious direction Celine appeared to be going may actually be known but never be fully explored.

This has just been a brief account of the last 12 months, and I am reluctant to further private searching unless I am given all information available, which on history seems unlikely to eventuate!

Explicitly if I was asked for a summary in a coronial enquiry, I would describe the overall search as a cluster-f*ck!

An outlined sandshoe? imprint in soft soil located beyond the Police search area.