The Lost Ones podcast: Why people can easily disappear in Tasmania’s wilderness

Many Australians have simply vanished without a trace in Tasmania. This is how they have succumbed to the spooky and rugged terrain. LISTEN TO THE PODCAST.

Quicksand, sinkholes, landslides and rockfall – the Tasmanian landscape is beset with danger.

Of the state’s 169 missing people, many are bushwalkers and feared lost to the wild.

“When it’s all cloudy and there’s no visibility, you step on a track and walk the wrong way for a minute, you’re lost in the Lost World,” environmentalist and activist Dan Broun told episode five of The Lost Ones podcast.

“You then panic, slip on a wet rock, knock your head and fall down a hole, and no-one’s going to find you for a very long time.

“You’ve got to watch what you’re doing all the time.”

And those who do succumb to the elements are often never seen again — their human remains disposed of by Tasmanian devils.

“They have the strongest jaws of any animal on earth, so they can crush bone easily,” Mr Broun said.

On a bushwalk with News Corp to an area called the Lost World on Hobart landmark kunanyi / Mt Wellington, Mr Broun pondered four cases of people who’d vanishing in the past seven decades.

PODCAST: Trip to Mt Wellington

Listen to the latest episode of The Lost Ones below:

Southern Cone in South-West Tasmania. Picture: Dan Broun

All of them were passionate — and in some cases accomplished — hikers, mountaineers and cavers.

He said entire cars had been swallowed by quicksand on the Tarkine Coast in the state’s northwest.

“It’s kind of like glue. It just sucks you in,” he said.

He also said bushwalkers had sometimes fallen prey to “sinkholes” – openings to caves that could be as small as a body and covered by vegetation.

DuCane Range in the Central Highlands of Tasmania. Picture: Dan Broun

The hazard of sinkholes is caused by the fact much of Tasmania has a “karst” landscape, meaning it is made up of water-soluble rock like dolerite and limestone, which causes pockmarks in the surface of the earth.

Geologists Colin Mazengarb and Nick Roberts at Mineral Resources Tasmania said the state was unique for its karst landscape and associated “weird and wonderful” underground drainage patterns.

“It has an extensive karst system with underground caves and waterways that are really quite extensive and deep in places,” Mr Mazengarb said.

“These systems have been forming for millennia, millions of years. They are quite extraordinary in the Tasmanian location.”

Bruce Fairfax with one of his daughters. Picture: Louise Fairfax via Instagram

BUSHWALKERS WHO SUCCUMBED TO THE TASMANIAN WILDERNESS

The caver: John Patrick Doyle, 26, was from Mullumbimby, NSW. He moved to Tasmania to pursue his love of caving. In 1969, he hiked Mt Anne, in Tasmania’s southwest, with a caving club. The group was split up looking for someone’s jumper, and Mr Doyle was never seen again.

The adventurer: Wade Butler, the son of famous Sydney mountaineering pioneer Dorothy Butler, set out for a solo six-day hike of Precipitous Bluff in Tasmania’s southwest during 1995. He was never seen again.

The poet: Bruce Fairfax was a beloved family man, retired teacher and passionate bushwalker who disappeared while walking at Duckhole Lake, in Tasmania’s Huon Valley, in 2017.

The lost woman: Joyce Baxter disappeared on kunanyi / Mt Wellington in 1955. Her bones were discovered in 1972 at the base of the Organ Pipes, a geological feature of the mountain. But those remains weren’t formally identified until DNA technology had progressed enough to solve the case in 2017. The circumstances surrounding her death remains unknown.

To discover more about the hidden dangers of the Tasmanian Wilderness, and those who have succumbed to its elements, go to lostonespodcast.com.au

Originally published as The Lost Ones podcast: Why people can easily disappear in Tasmania’s wilderness