Mystery of man missing in the Outback

Photo / Thinkstock

Last Sunday a pastoralist patrolling his vast station near the South Australian Outback town of Glendambo, almost 600km north of Adelaide, found a half-starved pointer cross bitch wandering alone.

His call reporting the find to authorities raised new hopes in the search for a 29-year-old father-of-two last seen in late June, alone and incoherent near Woomera, 120km away on central Australia's Stuart Highway.

Jason Richards, a glazier from the Victorian goldfields city of Ballarat, has become the latest traveller to vanish on the 2800km bitumen ribbon linking Darwin in the north to Port Augusta in South Australia.

The dog was Amy, Richards' companion on a three-month journey that had taken him north in search of work in the mines and ended in mystery.

The Stuart Highway and the surrounding ochre-red vastness of central Australia have become a fount of Outback legend, fanned by popular mythology and brutal reality.

Its victims include Peter Falconio, the 28-year-old British tourist whose disappearance near remote Barrow Creek in 2001 created an international sensation and spawned books, a movie and TV programmes.

Falconio and his companion Joanne Lees were stopped by a man on the highway and bound. Lees later escaped but Falconio is believed to have been killed. His body has never been found. Four years later a violent misfit, Bradley Murdoch, was convicted of his murder.

Other recent tragedies include the disappearance of Whakatane man Jamie Herdman, 26, who vanished from Daly Waters south of Darwin in 2006, and Peter Murphy, whose body was found in a shallow grave two years after he disappeared from Alice Springs in 2008.

The discovery of Amy has renewed hope among family and friends and police have moved their search from Woomera to Glendambo.

Richards vanished after he decided to return to Ballarat to partner Jess Laidlaw and their children after living in Darwin since April with his sister Danielle Wilkinson and her family.

Unable to find a job in the mines, he had been working for a Darwin glazier, who said Richards had been a popular employee who workmates had tried to convince to move north permanently.

But Richards wanted to get home in time for his son Jack's birthday and left his sister's home on June 19 with Amy beside him in his blue Toyota ute, towing an aluminium boat.

Richards took enough diesel in drums to cover 2000km, 60 litres of water and a rifle. Melbourne's Herald Sun said the experienced bushman also had a fishing rod, the skull and rolled-up skin of a crocodile and a set of pig jaws stashed in the boat.

Richardson drove hard, covering the 2180km to the opal-mining town of Coober Pedy, 850km north of Adelaide, in 26 hours.

He kept in touch with his family as he drove, texting regularly until his last message from Coober Pedy, saying he had had a close call with a road train and was pulling over to sleep.

Early the following morning he tried calling his brother-in-law Matt Wilkinson as he neared Woomera, but the call was not answered.

Police were told that about 8am on June 21 he flagged down a road train driver near the tiny hamlet of Pimba, near Woomera, but had appeared confused and disoriented.

Another traveller had seen Richardson's ute driving erratically. No one has seen him, or the ute, since.

Richardson's partly-burned boat was found on a dirt road near Pimba but his mobile is turned off and his bank account has not been touched.

His father Wayne told the Herald Sun he believed his son had felt threatened.

"All I know is he was very agitated and he was in fear that someone was following him. He thought he was being followed."