The family also revealed the missing man’s young nieces and nephews carry his spirit every day by wearing the same red Adidas sneakers he was wearing when he disappeared.

A mammoth coronial investigation examining the disappearance of Jeremiah “Jayo” Rivers determined last month that the 27-year-old is dead and was likely the victim of foul play.

Coroner Donald MacKenzie also branded the seven different accounts given by the six other men who were travelling with Jayo when he disappeared as “lies”.

Jayo was last seen at a campsite at the remote Wippo Creek, near Noccundra in South West Queensland, on October 18, 2021.

Jayo and his kinship brother Joe Joe Kantilla-Gaden arranged the trip from Balranald in NSW to the Northern Territory, which they called home.

Their friend Matthew Moore joined them on the pig hunting trip, as did his Victorian friends – Travis Clare, Dylan Thomas, Joel McMaster and Kane Toohey.

The inquest heard that the group drove more than 1000km and illegally crossed the closed Queensland-NSW border to Wippo Creek. When they arrived around 7am or 8am on October 18, the group claims Jayo went off to swim to cool down.

He did not return and was never seen again. He was not reported missing until 3pm the next day. A subsequent extensive eight-day search found nothing.

Jayo’s aunties, Belinda and Marcia Rivers, said they were happy his case remains open and the coroner confirmed their long-held belief that the other group members had lied.

But they both expressed their anger at the suggestion wild pigs in the search area may have been responsible for Jayo’s body never being found.

“The coroner said he believes Jayo is deceased, but there is no body and he touched on ‘wild pigs’ and that did piss us off and made us angry,” Marcia Rivers told The Sunday Mail.

“A lady who has followed the case and was recommended by a private investigator who also took an interest in Jayo’s case, she contacted a wild pig expert and they said wild pigs don’t devour an entire carcass.

“He shouldn’t have put that in his report like that, if there was a human body there, they wouldn’t have eaten a skull, for example, so they would have found that.

“We also lived there [Wippo Creek] for three or four months after Jayo disappeared because we walked and searched the entire area with our family. We would come across wild pigs, but they never attacked us, so why would they attack Jayo?

“It makes your blood boil … and that was a very hard thing to swallow.”

The sisters have been buoyed by the continued interest in Jayo’s case by those he met along the way in multiple states, as the family comes to terms with not knowing his fate.

“The family trauma goes right down to our grandkids, Jayo was the popular one in our family, he was really family-orientated,” Marcia Rivers said.

“It has really taken a toll on his nieces and nephews, they really idolised him. They still want something to remind them of him, so they made their mums buy the red sneaker shoes – like what Jayo was wearing that day – to go to school.”

Even though the coronial inquest cleared the Queensland Police Service of any wrongdoing in the search and criminal investigation, Jayo’s family have not been as forgiving.

“The case is still open, and that’s a good thing, but nobody has been held accountable,” Belinda Rivers told The Sunday Mail.

“I was at the shops this week and I bumped into a lady who asked me how I was. But what can you say to these people, they have the same questions as we do still, but we don’t have any answers.

“I know they have done their search and they showed us on a map with GPS markers all of the areas they had covered, but they still missed motorbike tracks which were found by our family members during their own search.

“We also found shoe prints near Wippo Creek after the search and rescue had finished, and we matched these to the tread of Jayo’s shoes.

“But with all of our work, every time we asked for feedback, the police have hidden behind the excuse that they can’t talk to us because they don’t want to jeopardise the investigation.”

The family have asked Queensland police to offer a reward for information on Jayo’s disappearance, but this is yet to occur.

They plan to retrace Jayo’s final journey themselves in the future – dependent on finances – from Balranald in NSW to Wippo Creek in Queensland.

“We won’t rest until we find answers and bring him home, then we will be able to grieve for him,” Belinda Rivers said.

In his findings last month, the coroner said he ultimately could not refer the case to the Director of Public Prosecutions office for potential criminal charges.

“The lies and suspicious post-offence behaviour by October 22, 2021 where at least seven different versions were provided by those members, are lies that cannot be used in a criminal case strictly as post offence behaviour,” Mr MacKenzie said.

“The reason is there is another explanation (for their repeated lies to police across multiple states) – they were trafficking cannabis, possibly other drugs, to the Northern Territory, or they were in breach of Covid- 19 restrictions at the time.

“I have determined on the balance of probabilities that Jayo is deceased and was likely the victim of foul play.

“My other concern in terms of making a referral to the DPP is that Jayo could still have died from natural causes … such as heat exposure or sunstroke.”

No charges have been laid over Mr Rivers’ disappearance, the alleged Covid-19 border breach when the group crossed into Queensland, or the alleged drug trafficking plot into the Northern Territory.