Andrew Rule: How failed search for missing hiker Christos Pittas could’ve ended differently

Exactly one year ago, Christos Pittas put down his sudoku puzzle, kissed his wife and set off for a walk in rough country near the Dinner Plain village. He was never seen again.

Tess Pittas is upset about the shortcomings of the failed police search for her husband Christos. Picture: Jason Edwards

It’s a year this weekend since Christos Pittas vanished on an afternoon walk in rough country near the Dinner Plain village where he and his wife Tess were taking a week’s holiday.

He had done two walks a day for the five days the couple had been staying at the “Frostbite” holiday rental on the Mt Hotham side of the village.

Christos had wrecked the sole of his shoe that morning and Tess suggested he stay inside for the afternoon to avoid the cold weather. But, despite his 70 years, the longtime tramways inspector was wiry and fit — and a man of habit. He borrowed Tess’s New Balance shoes rather than miss his walk.

His other habit was doing a daily sudoku puzzle after lunch. At 2.45pm he said to Tess that the new sudoku was too hard to crack in time so he’d finish it when he got back.

She kissed him and said “Be careful.” He said

“Don’t worry, darling. Leave it to the expert.”

Then headed off while she went back to watching television before preparing dinner.

She never saw him again.

When Christos didn’t return by 5pm, Tess started to worry. An hour later, she was “agitated,” she recalls with trembling lips, reliving the start of the worst week of her life.

A year on, she is heartbroken by the loss of her husband and upset about the shortcomings of the police search for him.

Christos Pittas vanished on an afternoon walk in rough country near the Dinner Plain village.

Not that Tess Pittas is a complainer. She is forever grateful at the efforts of volunteer searchers — bushwalkers, the State Emergency Service and Omeo and Hotham locals — who braved poor weather for a week. But the family is disappointed by the official response.

Christos went missing late on Friday, May 13. Less than 40 hours later, on Sunday morning, Tess and other family members asked police about using dogs to pick up the lost man’s scent before it was too late.

The response crushed them. Tess recalls the inspector in charge of the search stating that such dogs were available in New South Wales — but not in Victoria. Even if that were true, she couldn’t understand why dogs could not be brought from interstate on a life and death mission.

The unspoken message was “Bad luck, lady. That’s the way it is.” Tess felt she wasn’t taken seriously.

She was filled with dread about what was unsaid: the overwhelming likelihood that if Christos was not found in the next 24 hours he would die of exposure.

Disappointment turned to anger when the family learned that the police had rebuffed the offer of specialised search dogs from a volunteer group, apparently on grounds that the area was too rough for police dogs and handlers, so no dogs would be used at all.

It appears the Victoria Police policy was dictated by its dog squad, which uses general-purpose police dogs, essentially attack animals that work mostly on a leash at close range in suburban settings.

Australian police forces mainly use German shepherds which, like the Belgian Malinois and rottweilers, are “biters” — good at crowd control and grabbing fleeing or aggressive burglars, car thieves and drug dealers.

These robust dogs give police more teeth in the face of aggression. But not elite tracking ability.

Although these admired police dogs provide media “picture opportunities” at search scenes, no one can recall the last time a Victoria Police dog found a genuinely lost person in a genuine wilderness area. (Embarrassingly, when Queensland Police lost a german shepherd in outer-suburban bushland in late 2020, they could not track it; a member of the public found the dog later that week.)

Australian police forces mainly use German shepherds, which are ideal for crowd control and apprehending fleeing crooks, but not tracking.

Tracking lost people (or locating their bodies) are specialist canine tasks that Australian police have largely ignored despite the country’s vast areas of bush, mountains and desert.

This is despite the fact that Australian Border Force breeds world-class “sniffer dogs”, a strain of American field labradors, near Melbourne Airport, close to the police kennels. These dogs are highly trainable to detect guns, cash, drugs … or people.

Quite rightly, the police force invests in thermal-imaging equipment, multiple aircraft, a fleet of off-road motorcycles — and excellent mounted police whose function now verges on ceremonial, apart from crowd control.

Quite rightly, the police force has a pipe band, a touching link with tradition that endears our police to the public.

Yet, to date, the force has had no dedicated search or tracker dogs, bred and trained to find people.

The true cost of such a tiny budget “saving” can be counted in lives lost and the endless grief of families who never find the remains of the missing. Or who are tortured by the thought that tracker dogs might actually have saved their loved one from death.

In the Pittas case, the search was abandoned after a week when it became clear that searchers were by then looking for a body in harsh conditions.

The family was stricken by the faint possibility Christos could be injured but alive, praying for rescue. They were told the search for his remains would resume in spring.

That promise, if it was one, was broken. So were the next three or four, as the date for a fresh search was moved from spring to summer and into autumn. According to Tess, the new “search” ended up being just two days in April, 11 months after her husband was lost. She cries as she tells that.

The fact the search was abandoned at Dinner Plain last winter is not the disgraceful part of the Pittas family’s ordeal. Police resources are finite and overstretched, which is all the more reason to recruit volunteers in searches.

So why refuse volunteer search dogs offered early in the Dinner Plain search?

After all, volunteer bushwalkers, riders and other locals were “allowed” to search; it’s what decent people do, especially in the country. Some local businesses shut so that staff and customers could help the search. And yet volunteers with trained search dogs were not invited.

It’s possible that if the same people had left their highly-schooled search dogs home, and turned up with walking sticks, whistles and high-vis vests, they would have been welcomed to the circus.

Who knows what decisions bureaucrats might make, or why?

That’s a question posed by the relatives of an Adelaide woman who wandered from her car and died under a tree in a Mallee wheat paddock last winter. They are just as confused and upset as the Pittas family.

One of the last time Colleen South was seen was when she was captured on CCTV at Sunraysia Petroleum at Berriwillock. Picture: Facebook

Just seven weeks after Christos Pittas went missing, Colleen South drove out of Adelaide on July 1. She was later seen near Bendigo and bought a small amount of fuel at Berriwillock on July 3. That same Sunday afternoon, her car was found abandoned on a quiet back road in farmland near Wycheproof.

The missing woman fell through the gap between South Australian and Victoria Police. By the time both forces took her disappearance seriously and co-operated a little, she was dead.

Inexplicably, Colleen South’s body was not found for five weeks, during which time her daughter Veronica and her niece Farah Mak feared she had been abducted or murdered.

In the end, a farmer found Colleen’s body under a lone tree in a wheat paddock as level as a football ground, just 1429m from her car.

Only a spindly farm fence separated the paddock from the car, but the police searchers didn’t bother with the obvious. Instead, they rode motorbikes and horses down roads and railway reserves many kilometres away.

If dogs, maybe even conventional police dogs, had been brought to the car in the first hours, to pick up Colleen’s scent, there’s a strong chance they would have led searchers to her. Because if general police dogs aren’t up to that task, the force needs one or two dogs that are.

What no one knows now is if such prompt action could have saved Colleen South. But it certainly could have saved her family terrible fear, and saved the police force from a lengthy, costly and ultimately useless search ranging 20km away.

Colleen’s niece Farah Mak was left frustrated by her contact with one police officer. Picture: Supplied

Local farmers, like the one who found the body by chance, could have told police the obvious place to search was within easy walking distance of the car.

When locals suggested that, they were ignored. Meanwhile, Colleen South’s family were treated as if they were nuisances.

Insp. Gerard de Vries, newly transferred to Swan Hill from suburban Melbourne, retorted to a query from Colleen’s niece Farah Mak with words she recalls as: “Oh, Farah, she’s probably been picked up by a passer-by and they’re living off the grid somewhere.”

If Insp. de Vries was serious, his words made him sound foolish. If he wasn’t serious, he was deliberately misleading the family. So was he being foolish — or just insincere?

That is one of the questions a Victorian coroner will ponder in the inquest into Colleen South’s death. The mentions hearing will open at Melbourne Coroners Court on May 22. Coroner David Ryan has flagged his intention to look at the scope of the search and the relevant police procedures and policies.

What that really means is he will ask why police didn’t use dogs early and often. If the coroner doesn’t ask the bleeding obvious, who can?

Meanwhile, in Tasmania, police and searchers are looking for teenager Shyanne-Lee Tatnell, who went missing in Launceston two weeks ago. They have no clue exactly where she went after she was last seen in a street.

If Tasmanian police had trained search dogs from day one, of course, it might be a different story. If Shyanne-Lee was being held against her will, for instance, such dogs might have helped lead police to her in time to save her.

But that hasn’t happened. So far, the only elite tracker dogs in Australia are in private hands.

The good news is a rumour that Victoria Police have recently found enough loose change to buy a bloodhound pup to train.

Bloodhounds have been around since Belgian monks bred them in medieval times. William the Conqueror took them to England in 1066.

So it seems that when it comes to using dogs to track people, Australian police are finally moving into the 11th century.