The mysterious disappearances of three men in Western NSW and thousands of similar cold cases are being brought to the community's attention again as part of National Missing Persons Week.
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Bennett (Ben) Dominick was last seen at a friend's camp at the Coocoran Opal Fields in Lightning Ridge in January 2015. A vehicle that belonged to the now 46-year-old was found a few days later in nearby bushland and he has not been seen or in contact with family or friends since.
Maxwell George, now 67, was last sighted at his property in Brewarrina in March 2000 and has not been seen or heard from since.
Harry Youl never returned from a lunch break he was on when he worked in Dubbo in 1990. The now 82-year-old man's personal belongings were left behind and he had recently moved to Dubbo from Victoria.
The men were among about 2600 people across the nation who had been missing for more than three months, the Australian Federal Police's national missing persons coordination centre team leader Trish Halligan said.
She said the number of people who were missing had increased, along with the number of reports made which had risen from about 35,000 a year to about 38,000.
"It certainly is of concern but the message we're trying to get through is that this isn't a police issue, it's a community issue," Ms Halligan said.
"Things such as mental health, dementia - they're not police issues but it does fall to police to locate people that are considered to be missing."
While there are many reasons people go missing, including miscommunication, family violence, abduction, murder and misadventure, Ms Halligan said mental ill health and dementia were the most common.
"There's been a lot of work done with identification bracelets and things like that, so if dementia patients go for a walk and they don't come home it's an easier process for community members to find them, realise there's an issue and then be able to use the bracelet to ring for assistance," she said.
National Missing Persons Week runs from August 4 to August 10 and Ms Halligan said the focus this year was on recognition that every missing person was an individual with family and friends impacted by their loss.
"If you were a parent and you had young kids and you went to the shopping mall or to a fun park and you lost sight of them for a few minutes [you'd get] that sinking feeling in your stomach where you'd go 'oh my god where are they'," she said.
"Can you imagine that continuing for years?
"That only lasts for a few minutes until you locate your child but if that feeling goes on for years and years it's actually an ambiguous loss - that uncertainty of not knowing what happened and why they've gone.
"It causes family members to not be able to move on with their lives and it does cause friction within families because different family members experience different emotions at different times and they also have their own ideas about what happened."
The effects of someone disappearing and never being found were "very difficult to comprehend unless you've experienced it", Ms Halligan said.
"It can happen to anyone, there is no religion or race, it doesn't matter whether you're rich or poor this can affect anybody.
"At the very start when someone walks through a police station and reports someone missing, that's the best opportunity we have of locating them safe and sound in a very short period of time.
"The further away you get from that original time of them disappearing the harder it then becomes to collect information."
Ms Halligan said sometimes people underestimated the complexity of the work police had to undertake to investigate missing persons cases because they'd seen cases swiftly solved in television programs like Without A Trace and Cold Case.
"What people don't understand, especially with those shows, is that the police appear to have one job and it's to find that person," she said.
"Unfortunately for police they have many jobs and they certainly have to prioritise and decide what is the most important at any one point in time and work through their case loads that way.
"So it's not as easy and clear cut as you'll see on TV.
"It is quite complex and complicated to investigate these sorts of disappearances."
Ms Halligan said events like National Missing Persons Week were important for families and friends who want their loved ones to be remembered.
"They don't get forgotten and events like this help raise awareness and educate the community," she said.
- If you have concerns for someone's safety and welfare, and their whereabouts is unknown, you can file a missing person's report at your nearest police station and if you have information about a missing person you can call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
