The Lighthouse podcast: Son’s tumble sparks cliff-fall suspicion over Theo Hayez

A small mistake on dangerous cliffs almost cost Kim Goodrick’s teenage son his life. | NEW EPISODE

Connor Meldrum, 15, with mum Kim Goodrick at Cosy Corner at Tallows Beach in Byron Bay. Picture: Natalie Grono.

A small mistake on dangerous cliffs almost cost Kim Goodrick’s teenage son his life.

She wonders if something similar happened to missing backpacker Theo Hayez — and if warning signs could have saved him. Ms Goodrick was meant to collect her 15-year-old son, Connor Meldrum, and a friend from Byron Bay on a sunny afternoon in March this year, but he wasn’t answering his phone.

Find My iPhone showed Connor was near Cape Byron Lighthouse, so she drove there to find him. “I was kind of getting a bit ­annoyed, you know what it’s like, teenagers not replying to their phone,” she said.

“As I drove up to the lighthouse and came around that final corner, it was just this wall of paramedics, ambulances, police, the whole lot.

“I just knew that something had happened.”

Connor had plunged at least 15m to the bottom after going to Cosy Corner at Tallow Beach and trying to climb the cliffs south of the lighthouse.

It is near the area that 18-year-old Theo was tracked to via his smartphone and Google account in May.

Ms Goodrick has spoken on the latest episode of The Australian’s investigative podcast, The Lighthouse, examining the disappearance of Theo, from Brussels.

Two fishermen were at the bottom of the cliffs when Connor fell, and stayed with him until a rescue helicopter arrived to take him to Gold Coast University Hospital.

“Thank God they (the fishermen) were there, because he ­nearly fell in the water,” she said. “And this is one thing that does bring me back to that Theo Hayez case. The fishermen said that had he fallen just an hour earlier, he would have fallen into the water and been washed straight out to sea because of the way that the tide was.”

Wild goats used to roam the Cape Byron cliffs but are now gone, and their thin tracks are ­becoming ever more dangerous.

“The other thing that has come out is that what the boys were following, they weren’t being crazy,” she said. “There are those old goat tracks that go up the cliffs.

“The goats were getting rid of all of the shale, and so they were probably on to solid rock.

“Now what’s happened is, it looks like a kind of easy path and people start going up it. But halfway up there, you get to a point where you can’t go back and it looks safer, or at least the boys made the decision that they would carry on and try and get to the top.

“They felt that they were going to fall into the ocean if they tried to go back.”

Rescue crews attend to Connor after his fall. Picture: Supplied

The podcast previously revealed that police told Theo’s family they suspected he had an accident at the lighthouse cliffs and ended up in the water. The podcast is testing that theory and seeking witnesses who may be able to provide answers.

Ms Goodrick wrote to the ­National Parks and Wildlife Service on March 28 to request warning signs and barricading at Cosy Corner “as a matter of extreme ­urgency”. National Parks replied on April 10 to say additional signs had been erected at Tallow Beach and Cosy Corner access points.

Ms Goodrick sent a follow-up email on June 2, complaining that the signs were at the carpark and not at the cliffs. Only on June 27 did the service say it was going to put signs at Cosy Corner itself, and there is one there now.

“If they’d done that you never know if that could have helped Theo,” Ms Goodrick said.

She said the scene at the hospital was “just like you see in the movies”, with people crowded around her son’s bed.

“We were waiting for the neurosurgeons. They came in and just said it’s ­really very, very bad, and that he’d smashed his skull,” Ms Goodrick said.

Yet Connor has made a remarkable recovery. His shattered skull has healed and he can again speak, read and play the piano.