History is littered with cases of people who, for whatever reasons, just seem to step off the face of the earth, to vanish into thin air. No one seems to be immune to this happening to them, with people of all ages and all walks of life just evaporating, while often leaving behind strange clues. Here we will look at a selection of perplexing cases of disappearances from Australia that have never been adequately solved.
A rather strange case occurred in 1925, when on August 27 of that year 6-year-old Thomas Williams went to visit relatives in Muchea, Western Australia. While there, he went off into some scrubland to go exploring, as boys do, and never came back. A huge search was launched, including using native Aboriginal trackers, and at first, they were unable to find any trace of the boy. Then they would find something that only deepened the mystery. David Paulides, author of the Missing 411 series of books, has said of it:
They requested Aboriginal trackers, they were responding. They couldn’t find any tracks, they didn’t find anything. August 30th, tracks found that people believed were Thomas’s. They couldn’t confirm it, but they followed those tracks through the dirt, six and a half miles, and then lost them in grass. That is unusual for Aboriginal trackers to lose a track. I’m just saying because I know how good they are, and they’re outstanding. They don’t lose tracks very often.
Tracks were indeed eventually found, but oddly not for another 15 or so miles. The trail just ended, and then picked up 15 miles later, with no trace of Thomas between when the Aboriginal trackers had lost the trail and when they found it again it was as if he had just teleported from one place to another. Furthermore, the trail of tracks they did find led them on a wild goose chase through all sorts of rough, at times nearly impenetrable terrain that it seemed unlikely that a 6-year-old boy could traverse, with one article in The Age saying of it:
Thomas Williams, six years, wandered off in some thick scrub on Saturday, and to date has been tracked for over 25 miles, the tracks showing where he continued walking through the night, bumping against stumps and trees. Native trackers have had to go on hands and knees in places to get through the scrub following the tracks. It is feared he may have walked into a swamp, leaving no trace.
Thomas was later found four days later, some 40 to 45 miles away from where he had vanished, lying face downwards, exhausted, in dense growth, and with little awareness of how he had gotten there. How did he manage to survive and get that far through terrain that even Aboriginal trackers found nearly impenetrable and treacherous? What happened to him over those 15 miles with no trace of his tracks and no sign that he was ever there at all? No one really knows. A similar case unfolded in 1931, when four-year-old Jimmy Shields went missing from his home in the Mossgiel district, New South Wales, apparently there one minute and gone the next. Once again a massive search was called out, and Paulides says of it:
Read More – Some Strange and Mysterious Disappearances in Australia
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