Tromp family’s idyllic life before road trip chaos

BEFORE the Tromps set off on a strange road trip, their close-knit family life in rural Victoria was a picture of tranquillity.

THE home of the Tromp family is a picture of tranquillity.

Parkview Farm, the “lovely, tranquil property” that is the site of the rural Victorian tight-knit tribe’s property and business, is a lush and sprawling berry farm where visitors are welcomed to pick redcurrant berries and explore the idyllic livestock-studded surrounds.

The farm, where each of the parents and three grown-up children live and work, is so peaceful and idyllic tourists and city folk pay to visit and experience how the Tromps live to escape their own daily lives.

Only earlier this week, it was the Tromps — mum Jacoba, dad Mark, and siblings Mitch, Ella and Riana — who felt the need to flee.

A series of extraordinary events, apparently sparked by a “build-up of pressure” that led the family to pack into Ella’s Peugeot and drive an aimless 825km north, has seen Mark missing, Jacoba hospitalised, and their children worried sick.

The Tromps left their once orderly home in a state of disarray. The family has been thrown into a similar state of chaotic disorder.

Jacoba, Mark and Ella Tromp grow redcurrants at Parkview Farm.

The Tromps grew redcurrants at the farm.

Before the Tromps’ fated road trip rocketed them to national headlines, they appeared to be a very close and happy family.

Social media posts show the affection and respect the siblings show for each other.

Exchanges between Mitch 25, and youngest sister Ella, 23, who fronted media holding hands yesterday, are filled with compliments.

Ella calls her big brother “Mitchy boy”. In a picture posted to Mitch’s Facebook profile where he rides a jetski, Ella said her big brother is “looking like a pro”. In another, she thanked him for “lending his muscles” while the pair worked together shifting hay on a friend’s property.

A picture of Riana, 29, also posted to Facebook garnered adoring comments from her siblings.

Mitch with his sister Ella.

Parkview Farm, Silvan.

“Pretty as a picture,” wrote Mitch.

“What a babe,” wrote Ella.

In another post, the two sisters discuss how much they look alike in the comments under a selfie of Mitch and Ella.

The kids were also very close to their parents.

In a public appeal for assistance with finding their father as their mother lay dazed in a rural NSW hospital, the kids also expressed how much they loved their missing dad.

“He’s not dangerous, he’s my mate, my father. I love him,” Mitch told media.

Pressure had apparently been building on the usually happy family in the days before they fled their Silvan home.

Mitch said his father had become “paranoid” after a “build-up of different, normal everyday events” leading him and Jacoba to unravel and take the rest of the family with them.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Mitch said.

“It’s really hard to explain or put a word on it but they were just fearing for their lives and then they decided to flee”.

Mitch said the “pressure”, as he described it, “slowly got worse as the days went by”.

He’s tried to explain his father’s disappearance saying he “thinks people are after him. He’s not in a good state of mind”.

Close siblings Mitchell and Ella Tromp address the media hand-in-hand at Monbulk Police Station. Picture: Andrew Henshaw

The home of Jacoba and Mark Tromp in Silvan who went missing on Monday. Picture: Andrew Henshaw

He said the family were trying to support each other as best they could, but they had not experienced anything similar before.

They left the farm on Monday for a “technology-free break”, driving north to NSW and stopping at Bathurst and Jenolan Caves without any real plan or direction.

On Tuesday, the three children decided they did not want to continue on as their parents became more and more mentally distressed.

Later that day after becoming separated from their parents, they reported them missing to NSW police.

There were signs of the chaos surrounding the family when police got to their Silvan home.

Doors were left unlocked, bank cards were still there and documents, including passports, were strewn throughout the house.

One senior Victorian police officer, Sergeant Mark Knight, said it was the most “bizarre” case he had seen in 30 years.

Mrs Tromp was in hospital in Yass for much of yesterday after she was seen walking around in a confused state. It’s believed she was taken to a mental health facility on Thursday.

She had been able to give police several addresses in the Wangaratta area in Victoria, where police believe her husband is.

Meanwhile, the couple’s children have returned to Silvan, and are holding on to hopes their once happy family will be reunited.

“I’ve never seen anyone like this or anyone conduct themselves in this way. I just really want my dad to be found,” Mitch said.

Mark Tromp remains missing. Picture: Victoria Police

Jacoba Tromp is believed to be in a mental facility. Picture: Victoria Police