BY KRISTIN EDGE Six months ago, Te Paewhenua 'Bobby' Roberts smashed through a barrier on the Kaimai summit in a work van and plunged over the cliff into dense bush.
The Te Puke man has never been found - but everyone involved has a theory.
THE bank accounts remain untouched.
There's been no phone call. No word.
But the family of 53-year-old Bobby Roberts still believe he is alive - using his bush and hunting skills to survive in the rugged Kaimai Range.
"We still think he's alive. We all think he is there in the bush," says his younger brother Heketua Roberts.
It has been six months since their loved brother and father of nine went missing but the pain is still fresh.
"It's devastating. We live in hope and it's just a feeling we've got but we think he's alive."
Heketua says the Roberts family were close, but the tragedy had drawn them even closer.
"It's the not knowing that really gets us. We have decided that we are just going to sit and wait and hope."
When passing the summit, Heketua often pulls over.
He stands at the cobble-stoned wall and gazes out over the Waikato farmland that unfolds below like a giant patchwork quilt. His gaze is drawn down to the bush.
"He's pretty happy-go-lucky and it was totally out of character," reflects Heketua.
His brother was a keen hunter and had spent time in the Kaimai Range. He was born and bred in Te Puke, attending the local high school.
No one in his family was prepared for what happened six months ago.
At 8.30am on Tuesday, November 30, Mr Roberts made an impulsive decision.
Nearing the peak of State Highway 29 on the Kaimai Range as he headed towards Tauranga, Mr Roberts turned his Fulton Hogan work van around and sped back down the hill, towards the scenic summit lookout.
He swerved across two lanes and sped into the lookout area.
Mr Roberts, travelling about 100kmh, smashed through the brick and steel lookout barrier, plunging more than 100m down the bush-clad cliff.
The impact popped the van's windscreen from its pillars, flattened the vehicle's front and catapulted unbuckled Mr Roberts through the air.
After 20m, the front of the van hit the ground. It spun end over end, tearing the roof rack from its bolts and tossing spades, shovels and electrical equipment out among the litter.
The van swerved to the right, hit a tree and rolled several times before stopping, mangled, against a tree stump.
Emergency services converged on the scene almost immediately after startled witnesses reported the crash.
Policemen scrambled down the cliff and searched the van and the area around it and a police dog was put through the dense bush.
Nothing.
Search and Rescue teams comprising 60 people from Tauranga and Hamilton moved in and began a meticulous grid search of the bush that would last for four days.
Tauranga Search and Rescue member and incident controller Bruce Sandford estimated they had covered an area of about 8 square kilometres in that time.
Hopes were raised when Mr Roberts' fluorescent Fulton Hogan vest was found about 100m from the van. And two days later, further up Omahine stream, searches found his Swanndri - his name label still stitched inside - and his carpenter's pencil in the front pocket.
It appeared as though Mr Roberts had been wandering up and down the stream and searchers had missed him.
There was low cloud and mist during the first few days after the accident and even experienced searchers, compass in hand, were getting lost, often walking in the opposite direction to the one they thought they were heading.
As search teams were pulled out, cadaver dogs were called in.
Still nothing.
A week after official search teams finished, the wider Roberts family continued their search of the steep bush clad hills.
There were no more clues.
Finally they left without their Bobby.
More than two decades on the beat. Too many accidents to remember.
But one crash has Sergeant Graham McGurk stymied.
Atop his organised desk at Matamata Police station, Mr McGurk flicks through the file that has Mr Roberts' name on the cover.
"In 23 years of policing this is the one that has the most unanswered questions," the burly police veteran says.
"It's unusual. This is the first one that I haven't found a victim."
The hefty pile of bound paperwork details eyewitness accounts, vehicle inspections, scene analysis and bush searches.
But it's missing one vital piece of information - the location of the van's occupant.
"I think he survived the crash but, due to his circumstances, did not want to be found and from there it does become a big mystery.
"Maybe due to injury, combined with his state of mind he has secreted himself away in a place where he could not be found and has just left nature to take its course."
Mr McGurk confirmed that the accident was an intentional act.
"He had suffered some domestic upheaval which appeared to affect him quite dramatically the day and the evening before."
But he reckons Mr Roberts is the type of guy, if he were alive, who would contact his family.
Police keep file open on
vanished Bobby Roberts
"He's not the sort of person who would dishonour his family. He's not a devious person or a con-man. He had never been in trouble with the police.
"You don't suddenly change your personality. He came from a large extended caring family and his children meant the world to him."
Mr McGurk spent two days at the crash scene, helping with the search.
He scoured the scene and was even prepared to talk with a medium who thought she knew where Mr Roberts might be in the bush.
"I don't discount that sort of thing. There is too much of the human mind we don't understand and I don't laugh at that sort of thing."
However, after search teams were directed to a specific spot they turned up nothing.
Police also considered using infra-red detectors to find Mr Roberts but strong winds would have endangered a helicopter hovering so close to the rugged terrain and the dense bush was just too thick.
A police crash analysis of the vehicle concluded it was "survivable".
Air bags were deployed as soon as the van struck the wall at the top of the cliff. The windscreen also popped out. But the most important note on the report was there was no indication of trauma. No blood.
"The energy would have fired him out the front when it impacted with the wall at the top," Mr McGurk says.
He considers it "a possibility but not a probability" that Mr Roberts is alive.
"All indications would appear that he has not come out of the bush alive."
During the search, officials discounted the sighting of a man seen limping along State Highway 29 near Ruahihi Power Station as being their man.
Police considered the physical chances of Mr Roberts reaching this point so soon after after the crash were very slim.
"It would be a challenge for someone who was physically fit, let alone a person emerging from a serious crash," Mr McGurk says.
Since then there have been numerous reported sightings of Mr Roberts. But family members have had no contact and police say the sightings have been very sketchy at best.
"That's what we are left with, a mystery," Mr McGurk says.
So the police file remains open and Bobby's family live in hope he will return. "Never say never ... that's one thing I have learned," Mr McGurk says.
Bay of Plenty Times
