Where is Celine Cremer?

To date I continue to remain mystified by Celine’s whereabouts as per my comments in Tasmanian Times on 11 and then 31 July.

Initially I theorised that Celine may have become completely disorientated and simply decided to head downstream. As a result of the Police/SES search being suspended, I decided to undertake my own investigations on that belief.

Not knowing where the search team had explored, I decided to investigate the area northeast of the track where prior to this century the original access to the bottom of Philosopher Falls was from the Butler Rd. Soon after the construction of the current track 15 years ago to the northern lookout, I taped a path north-eastward to link up with the original route to the base of the falls, which is now mostly overgrown.

My intention was to search for visible movement through this broader area to the base of falls from the south. This region has some very dense vegetation, and any old walking leads are now grown over. It was concluded that nobody had passed throughout that area recently, not even the search team.

Knowing that the police divers searched the water hole immediately below the falls. I suspected that they didn’t continue downstream very far. I also rappelled around the area above the falls and then descended the river for about I kilometre. Wading in and out of the steep sided river ravine I found no evidence that anyone had travelled this direction.

The river itself has countless semi-submerged log jams that could not be fully investigated due to the high flow in winter.

I am now certain that Celine did not walk downstream below the falls.

Subsequent to those searches I then meandered westward from the car park to the western upstream section of the Arthur River. Most of this area is open forest, and no signs of any human movement across the river or through the horizontal forest near the river were observed.

From the Arthur River, vehicle noise from the Savage River Road is quite audible, though misleading, as it appears to come from the west. If Celine attempted to orientate herself towards these sounds, she may have become deceived. This would have been the only explanation for her to cross the river and head west into dense horizontal forest.

There is no indication that this happened beyond a questionable phone signal register, of which the police investigated and searched with no reports of finding any tracks in that dense vegetation, which in my view should have been notably obvious in that mossy tangle.

Furthermore, in speculation that Celine became lost on return to falls late that afternoon, there would not have been enough daylight time for her to reach that signal (ping) designated area.

Questions remain

• If Celine’s phone had signal then why didn’t she call for help as there is reasonable coverage across the area above the falls?

• Celine was an experienced traveller – you think she would use Google maps to locate herself towards the track or road/transmission line south, which is through reasonably open forest?

• How accurate was that GPS signal location point given to the Police given the Mt Cleveland relay tower is about 8 kilometres away? (not sure if Whyte Hill has a repeater?)

• Through my observations, and media coverage why hasn’t there been a single indicator that Celine had been actually in the forest off the track?

Insofar as the internal forest search goes, the Police/SES have reached a dead-end unless someone miraculously wanders out there and finds her tracks, which is becoming less likely over time, even though in my view there remains dense forested areas adjacent to the track probably unsearched.

I attempted to make contact with the Police commander with the intent and hope that we could exchange information about searches. Although my request for a phone contact was denied, a message was forwarded but I received no return contact. Subsequent to that I did have a brief dialogue with Police at the Falls carpark, but once again no follow-up has eventuated.

I personally have probably spent about 10,000 nights in Tasmania’s wild country, including numerous search and rescue operations in extremely remote and difficult terrain. Surely, I would be worthy of a phone conversation?

If I recall, the Cremer family asked for people to help in looking for Celine, but it seems the Police haven’t encouraged that beyond their own search.

The Police have claimed through that phone tower ping, that they now have evidence that Celine was off the track. The unsuccessful cadaver dog search proved that evidence is feeble at its best!

Given the extensive search time and effort conducted by all, and the non-existence of physical/material evidence or visible tracks, I’m yet to be convinced Celine was, or is, anywhere in the forest off the well-defined walking track!

The mystery continues.

Ted Mead is a Tasmanian conservationist, naturalist, photographer and author.