The Lost Ones podcast explores what may have happened to those who vanished in Tasmania

More than 160 lost souls are still missing in Tasmania after they mysteriously disappeared off the face of the Earth. A new podcast — The Lost Ones — investigates what happened to them.

They are the lost ones.

The men and women drawn to the beauty of Tasmania, who’ve literally vanished off the face of the earth.

More than 160 people — tree-changers, tourists, bushwalkers, adventurers and locals — are currently registered as missing in the state.

At least one third of them vanished somewhere in the wilderness — those vast tracts of ancient rugged forest that have been home to humans for 40,000 years.

It is a place of unparalleled beauty, but also of extraordinary mystery, with a shocking and sad history of brutality and violence dating back to the colonial era.

It is for many the Apple Isle, a green and gourmet holiday hotspot. But for others it is the little island at the end of the world, down under Down Under, a place to lose oneself.

Tomorrow, News Corp launches a new multi-series podcast, called The Lost Ones, which aims to find out what happened to people who were drawn to its remote locales, only to be forever lost.

Listen to a preview of The Lost Ones here:

Beneath Tasmania’s beauty also lies a dark side.

No one can truly be sure what happened to them. Not the police, and not even their grieving families — many of whom last saw them decades ago.

Through a series of recordings with family members, acquaintances and the authorities, the paths of these “lost ones” are recreated.

Some may have fallen victim to Tasmania’s bitter cold, or fallen through cave openings known as “sinkholes” while out bushwalking.

Others may have entered the bush to end their own lives.

Then there are those who met with foul play, with the Tasmanian landscape providing the perfect cover for violent crime.

Jo Bateman, who lives in the pristine Huon Valley, south of Hobart, said there was a spate of disappearances during the 1990s but that people had been vanishing in Tasmania for a very long time — and still do.

Huon Valley residents (from left) Beth Gregory, Andrew Hogarth, Jane Theile and Jo Bateman. Irene Rallings, daughter of missing man Geoffrey Rallings (centre). Picture: Amber Wilson

“This is the sort of place that people can just get lost,” she said.

She also said her area, like other remote, hard-to-access parts of Tasmania, attracted plenty of people from interstate or abroad, who wanted to start a new life.

Tasmania’s bush regions also drew unusual people who wanted to live away from the conventions of mainstream society, she said.

“You find a lot of strange people down here because they’re all trying to get away from something. That’s the thing with isolated places, people always trying to get away from something,” she said.

Geoffrey Rallings’ family home in the early 80s in Lady Bay Tasmania – Picture: Supplied

Episode one of The Lost Ones focuses on the case of Huon Valley preacher Geoffrey Rallings, who moved from England via New South Wales, only to end up on Tasmania’s list of missing people.

Mr Rallings’s daughter Irene believes her father was murdered, or killed accidentally, somewhere near his remote home in 1995, and won’t give up trying to find out what happened, to finally put him to rest.

The first episode of The Lost Ones podcast launches tomorrow. To listen, go to lostonespodcast.com.au

Originally published as The Lost Ones podcast explores what may have happened to those who vanished in Tasmania