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ABC News
3 hours ago
- ABC News
Friends to continue search two years after Belgian tourist Celine Cremer vanished at Philosopher Falls
Celine Cremer is not the first person to vanish without a trace in the thick Tarkine rainforest on Tasmania's west coast. The 31-year-old Belgian tourist disappeared at Philosopher Falls two years ago, a walk named after the prospector and mining investor James "Philosopher" Smith, who is said to have changed the entire fate of Tasmania by discovering tin at Mount Bischoff. The walk is a short trek outside the town of Waratah, and is known for its enchanting forest, brightly coloured fungi, and a glimpse into the region's mining past. Signage on the track explains that it follows a water race that carried water from the Arthur River to the now ghost mining town of Magnet to provide hydro power. A century later, private investigator Ken Gamble is scrambling through the forest, but he is not looking for minerals. "I've been to a lot of very rough areas and I spent three years in the army reserve and I've never seen anything like this," Mr Gamble said. "This was something else. Once you get into the area where she disappeared, it is really something I've never seen before, and it's dangerous. Another sign down near the falls, just readable under years of forest grime, shares the history of the conditions early prospectors faced. This quote on the sign has seemingly become prophetic. The woody interlacing branches, even when not an inch in diameter, will bear the weight of a man laden with his knapsack. But woe betide the luckless wight who, while travelling through this scrub, treads on the treacherous mossy disguised twig or branch which has decayed. Should this not infrequent case happen, down to unknown depths he may drop, while the green treacherous mossy carpet springs into its place like a trap, concealing the engulfed explorer. It is to be feared that one or two of our missing mining prospectors have met their fate this way… — RM Johnson, Systemic account of geology of Tasmania, 1888 Ms Cremer was reported missing on June 26, 2023, when she did not get on the Spirit of Tasmania as planned. Her car was found in the car park of the Philosopher Falls walking track the next day, but it is believed to have been there since June 17. Search and rescue teams conducted an extensive search of the area, using swiftwater rescue experts and a cadaver dog, but efforts were formally suspended on July 10 with winter conditions not considered survivable. Mr Gamble became involved in the case when Ms Cremer's friend Justine Ropet reached out to him. Her friends and family were frustrated that authorities could find no trace of her, and they wanted answers. Mr Gamble had worked on the disappearance of another Belgian in Australia, Theo Hayez. His specialty is complex cybercrime and large-scale online fraud, but he gets involved in select missing person cases when he believes police could have missed something. With permission from Ms Cremer's mother, Ariane, he obtained her phone data and began a pro bono investigation. He went through Ms Cremer's phone data and said he discovered additional settings within the raw data inside her Google account. "That actually provided me with very detailed GPS points, and I was able to map that out, and that gave me her last 40-plus GPS points up until 4:18pm on the day she disappeared," he said. "I put those into a map and a diagram, and I was surprised to learn that particular area was not searched." Mr Gamble ended up travelling to the forest in April 2024 to conduct his own search with a team on high ground above the walking track. "We went to that exact location and started searching from that point onwards. We were there for a couple of days," he said. He said the ground where she had gone was "treacherous". "It was thick, it had a large canopy of growth over it, and you couldn't actually walk through the forest — you had to climb under logs and over trees," he said. He returned again in May after organising a drone search with the help of drone expert Daniel Wood using LiDAR technology to capture the contours of the ground and to detect anything unusual. Mr Wood has a background in criminology, and his drone work is credited with finding the remains of Corey O'Connell in Western Australia two years after he went missing. Even the drone struggled to get accurate readings due to how thickly covered the ground was. But it captured an image of something with an unusual colour. "The police took that really seriously and sent their own team up to do an additional search," Mr Gamble said. The public was also able to help search for Ms Cremer by looking through the images captured by the drone. But again, nothing was found, and a third ground search by Mr Gamble's team also got no results. Because Ms Cremer had location services turned on, Mr Gamble said parts of her route could be traced. "You can see intermittent connections when she leaves the car park, and then it goes off for quite a while because she's walking in an area that has no coverage," he said. "Then right at the end of the trail across what's called Seven Mile Creek, she comes back into range again, and you can actually see by the coordinates where she's walking. "You can see where she's turned, and she's suddenly gone off the trail and gone up into high ground." He believed she had her phone's map on and was trying to follow it back to her car. Mr Gamble said he believed there was compelling evidence that something went wrong up in that area. "I strongly believe she is within a 1 kilometre radius of the area where she was last pinged at 4:18pm," he said. Friends of Ms Cremer have booked flights to come to Tasmania in December to do their own search. Ms Cremer's mother, Ariane, is helping organise the trip, but says she's been "very confident" with Tasmania Police in the search for her daughter, and she appreciates the support from the Tasmanian community. "I am still happy with the support we get from the other side of the world," she says. Ariane will not be travelling to Tasmania as part of the group, but says she hopes they will be able to find something. "I really do hope for us and for all the people involved to find a clue." In a post on social media translated from French, her friend Elo said they were "no longer hoping for miracles, only answers". "It will soon be two years since our childhood friend disappeared, without a trace, in a Tasmanian rainforest. Time passes but silence remains unbearable and its absence leaves a void that nothing fills," the post said. Her best friend, Justine Ropet, who has been working with Mr Gamble, also posted about the trip, saying the group of four would be going to the site to explore it themselves. "[The group will] be guided by Tasmanian Police, involved from the start, supported by experts and supported by volunteers," she said. "We sincerely hope to find a trace: an object, a clue, something." Tasmania Police Inspector Andrew Hanson said foul play was considered early on in the investigation into Ms Cremer's disappearance. "There is no evidence of anything else other than a misadventure," he told ABC Radio Hobart. Tasmania Police and Mr Gamble agree that she went off-track. Inspector Hanson said he acknowledged the pain Ms Cremer's family was feeling, and that it was a difficult decision to suspend the search. "We're still in touch with her family, mostly through her mum Ariane, and we are very keen and very committed to continue what efforts we can. "It's quite limited with the terrain and with the work that's already been done and with the passage of time, but we never close missing person cases." Inspector Hanson said visitors to Tasmania did not realise how dense bushland could be, and Philosopher Falls was an example of that. "We are very committed to continuing to help Ariane find her daughter, and that means assessing any new information or any new technologies that might help in that effort," he said.
9 News
10-06-2025
- 9 News
Being trusting is no longer endearing. It's dangerous
Your web browser is no longer supported. To improve your experience update it here ANALYSIS: The internet is evil, dangerous, seductive and manipulative. It can also be entertaining, informative, and positive. The probably impossible task mankind faces today is deciding which is which and taking back control of the net to confront the evil, before it further promotes terrorism, child abuse and scamming of the unlucky. One expert has a solution which would require anybody logging on to provide facial recognition and a fingerprint before they were allowed access. More of that ahead, but is it possible? Probably not. Regardless, Australia must lead the way on this because the crooks say we are too nice, the easiest of targets, world leading suckers being scammed. Let's face it. The net is not going away. It is so deeply embedded in life it can't be turned off even if we wanted to do that. It is like the cute lion club abandoned by its mother and raised by humans. One day, the cub is a fully grown animal that suddenly turns on its much-loved foster parent and snaps their neck. The internet is possibly that dangerous. But unlike the lion that cuddles a human moments before killing them, the world has been given some warning of what may come. So what do we do? It's a huge problem. Think about these figures. This is one large lion. It's estimated 4.5 billion people have access to the net. Despite early work it really started to emerge only in the mid-1980s. The first browser, Mosaic, is around 30 years old. The beast is young. Although it's impossible to fact-check nerds, the estimate is that by this year there will be 463 exabytes of data created daily on the net. One nerd says, for context, every word spoken by every human would be 5 exabytes. More context. An exabyte is one quintillion bytes, which is a one with 18 zeros after it. Even Victoria's state debt doesn't have figures like that. All this I know from several sources on the net. You get the point. Australia is the number one target in the world for scams. (Getty) What's available is beyond comprehension. So how much of it is hurting mankind? There are scams, lies, and dangerous pornography. The dark web, which is really quite accessible, provides a gathering place for paedophiles, drug dealers and bomb makers. It allows organised crime and terrorists to thrive. The scams help fund terrorism, the dark web helps them organise their bloody work with the money raised. Answers? Ken Gamble is a private detective, arguably Australia's leading scam buster. He is chair of IFW Global and has helped bust scams around the world. He's been ringing alarm bells for more than a decade with appearances before parliamentary inquiries. He says governments and police are not doing enough. Few have listened, which he says makes Australians an even bigger target. Speaking on the podcast Neil Mitchell Asks Why? he said organised crime syndicates run mainly by Israelis, Chinese and British are extremely sophisticated and well-organised. They use the telephone and the web, with scam centres staffed by hundreds of people tracking down vulnerable victims. "Australia is the number one target in the world. We have been for a number of years," Gamble said. "I've interviewed a number of criminals from various countries that we have arrested during operations and they all say the same thing: Australians are the easiest to trick." In a way, it's a compliment. Most Australians are hard-working, honest people who do not expect to see a crook behind every tree willing to promise the world and steal everything. He says although organised crime is behind the more sophisticated scams, local criminals are not missing out: "Increasingly, we are seeing scams perpetrated in Australia by other Australians," Gamble said. "We are seeing a lot of scams come out of the Gold Coast, for example. "The police response is so slow they can run their scam for three months, shut it down, pocket a million dollars or more and and get on with the next one. "By the time law enforcement comes along, they're long gone." Gamble also warns scammers are extremely dangerous, and his own life has been threatened. He says the risk is not only to gullible or greedy people and their bank accounts, but to human life and world peace. "We've traced some of these scams to members of terrorist organisations," he said. "We've traced it to people in Israel, Egypt, Lebanon. "We've got a number of cases where we have hard evidence that these dollars have gone into the hands of Hezbollah." He said apart from organised crime motorcycle gangs and traditional mafia, were now involved in scamming because it provides high profit for low risk. And it is getting worse. Scams are becoming more sophisticated. Artificial intelligence is the future. There have already been excellent AI fakes of the prime minister supposedly supporting an investment plan, and of celebrities endorsing things the actual celebrities have never heard about. AI scams and political tricks will be harder to pick and they are effectively uncontrollable. Imagine an Australian election campaign where Anthony Albanese is seen on video promising a new tax on everybody earning more than $50,000. Or a video of Sussan Ley saying, if elected, she will make Scott Morrison governor-general. Gamble has seen himself in deep fake, with an American accent, saying things designed to discredit him. He has also seen several fake websites established in the name of his company, again aimed to discredit because he was becoming too good at catching the bad guys. Obviously, we would all benefit from stronger lessons in scepticism and online caution. How do you know a website is genuine? How do you know that message is real? An example: I received an email with a Tax Office logo which began with a warning to watch out for Tax Office scams. The scammer was warning about scammers to try to build their credibility. Scepticism is essential, even in a trusting country. Gamble, who has seen the beast at its worst, has a radical plan. "Nobody is policing the internet as a whole. Nobody. No national or international global enforcement agency. "We live in a society where people enjoy their freedoms. "They do not want to have to put their fingerprint in to access the net. "But I would love to see when you log in to the net you are identified by your face and your fingerprint. "Of course, it can be exploited but it would be a good start. "It will probably never happen but that's one way of enforcing the law and actually regulating the use of the internet." Would the average person accept such a restriction? Would the crooks take more than five minutes to find a way around it? Sadly, the message behind use of the internet, the World Wide Web, and text messages, is: be sceptical, be careful, if it looks too good to be true, it isn't. And a footnote from history: in the mid-1950s when television was introduced, critics warned it would harm the world through declining intellectual and social skills, and become a new tool for propaganda and manipulation. Those critics had a point but the world adapted and survived. The net does all those things too, but the difference is TV doesn't empty your bank account and use the money to blow up a bus. Take care. Being trusting is no longer endearing. It's dangerous. Neil Mitchell is a Nine news analyst. His podcasts, both interviews and analysis, appear each Tuesday and Thursday as Neil Mitchell asks why? national scam World Internet media Technology Tech CONTACT US
Yahoo
23-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Murrysville church will host 'Orange Heart' ceremony for Vietnam veterans exposed to Agent Orange
Mar. 23—Jerry Deible of Murrysville can remember standing on the ground at a Vietnam firebase in the early 1970s, staring up at a massive C-130 airplane passing overhead. He craned his head back and snapped a photo of the plane as liquid streamed down from tanks strapped to its sides. The C-130 was spraying Agent Orange, an herbicidal defoliant that got its name from the orange band wrapped around the drums it came in. While there were other chemicals used to thin the triple-canopy Vietnamese jungles, Agent Orange accounted for 12 million of the 20 million gallons dropped over an area roughly the size of Massachusetts, according to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund. After more than 15 years of denying that the dioxin in Agent Orange was linked to cancers, birth defects and other medical issues with Vietnam veterans, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs was empowered in 1991 to declare a range of 19 diseases as probable effects of Agent Orange exposure, including several cancers. But its poisonous legacy has gone largely unacknowledged by the federal government. "We were told it was perfectly safe," said Deible, 76. "There were guys who'd go around the border of the firebase with jungle pants, boots and no shirts on with a pump tank of Agent Orange strapped to their backs, spraying it all over." Deible has joined with Murrysville Alliance Church Pastor Dan Lawrence to host an April 12 ceremony presenting Vietnam veterans with recognition from the nonprofit Orange Heart Medal Foundation. The foundation was created by Vietnam veteran Ken Gamble, who was diagnosed with cancer as a result of Agent Orange exposure. "This is recognition not by the federal government, but by one of their veteran brothers," Lawrence said. "Jerry came to me and said he felt like we needed to do something to recognize our vets dealing with this. We can't forget." The foundation's name comes from the medal presented to participating veterans, which is an orange heart with the letters "A" an "O" on either side of an outline of Vietnam. "When the Purple Heart was commissioned, it was the only award permitted to be in the shape of a heart," Deible said. "But when Ken Gamble started the foundation, he got permission from the government to make it in the same shape." The foundation was created in Tennessee, where the state legislature was the first in the nation to pass a law recognizing veterans affected by Agent Orange, in 2019. Nine additional states have joined Tennessee in the years since. In early 2024, the Pennsylvania Legislature convened a task force with the goal of helping better communicate treatment options to exposed veterans. Vietnam veterans or their surviving spouses can fill out an application to take part in the April 12 ceremony and receive an Orange Heart. Applications are available at Deible and Lawrence said poor treatment of Vietnam veterans returning to the U.S. after the war was compounded years later by a lack of recognition that millions of them had been exposed to a toxic herbicide. "The thinking today goes, if you were boots-on-the-ground in Vietnam, you were exposed to Agent Orange in some way," Deible said. Said Lawrence: "When these guys talk to me about how they came home and all that transpired, it's heartbreaking. We're saying to the community: Let's come together, pay respect to our Vietnam vets, acknowledge that Agent Orange is a real thing and not walk away from it." Medals have been given to more than 11,000 veterans during the nonprofit's short history. The public is invited to attend the April 12 event, which will start with an 11:30 a.m. luncheon at the church, 4130 Old William Penn Highway in Murrysville, followed by the medal ceremony. Applications are due by March 30. For more information or to RSVP, call 724-327-7206 or email office@ For more on the foundation, see Patrick Varine is a TribLive reporter covering Delmont, Export and Murrysville. He is a Western Pennsylvania native and joined the Trib in 2010 after working as a reporter and editor with the former Dover Post Co. in Delaware. He can be reached at pvarine@
