The appeal of Lizard Island is its remoteness. The Great Barrier Reef island, 250km from Cairns in Queensland’s tropical north, is known for its impressive snorkelling, with giant clams nestled among the coral. It also has a scientific research station.
Tourists are mostly kept at bay by its inaccessibility and eye-wateringly high accommodation prices.
But a week ago, on the west of the island, Suzanne Rees, a healthy and active 80-year-old, died alone. She had possibly just watched her luxury cruise ship, the Coral Adventurer, sail away without her.
The keen gardener and bushwalker from Sydney had intended to hike to the island’s historical summit, Cook’s Look, with other passengers on the second day of their 60-day circumnavigation of Australia. But on Saturday, feeling the heat, she turned around early. She never made it off the island and back to the ship.
Authorities were not alerted until five hours after the Coral Adventurer left Lizard Island at 3.40pm local time. The next day, Sunday, Rees was found dead close to the walking trail.
How she died, and why her absence from the ship was not immediately flagged, are the questions being asked by her grieving family, other cruise passengers, industry experts and authorities.
‘Then the ship left’
Rees and her fellow passengers boarded Coral Expeditions’ 120-guest Coral Adventurer in Cairns on Friday 24 October. Balcony rooms on the cruise were priced at $86,400 per person, according to Clean Cruising, with a 46-member crew on board the 94.5-metre purpose-built vessel.
VesselFinder satellite tracking data shows the ship left Cairns at about 5.30pm, arriving at Lizard Island at 8.30am on Saturday.
Rees was among a group of passengers who headed to the island to hike but, according to her daughter Katherine Rees, she had cut her walk short.
“We understand from the police that it was a very hot day, and Mum felt ill on the hill climb. She was asked to head down, unescorted,” Katherine Rees said on Thursday.
“Then the ship left, apparently without doing a passenger count. At some stage in that sequence, or shortly after, Mum died, alone.”
The Bureau of Meteorology’s closest weather station, about 30km away, recorded a high temperature of 31.9C that day.
A sailor on a nearby boat, Traci Ayris, told News Corp Australia she heard headcounts for snorkellers and that the ship had left soon after the presumed last hikers had returned from the island.
VesselFinder shows the Coral Adventurer left Lizard Island at 3.40pm, tracking north-westerly.
When Rees didn’t show up for dinner at about 6pm, the alarm was raised on board. Several bow-to-stern searches were conducted, with Rees initially believed to have gone overboard.
The Coral Adventurer made a sudden about-turn at 8.43pm on Saturday. At that time, it was about 114km from Lizard Island off Cape Melville. The cruise ship sailed south, retracing its path.
At 9pm, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (Amsa) was notified by the ship’s master that Rees was missing. Queensland police were alerted later that night.
The Coral Expeditions chief executive, Mark Fifield, said in a statement this week that “a search and rescue operation was launched on land and sea”.
By midnight, a helicopter search for Rees was under way on Lizard Island, according to Rob Siganto, the owner of the South Pacific II fishing and charter boat.
He told Australia’s national broadcaster, the ABC, that he was moored nearby and, listening on the radio, heard the helicopter crew discussing Rees’ last known location, “halfway” up the scrub-covered hill.
The Coral Adventurer’s tracking data shows it had returned to Lizard Island by 3.25am on Sunday. A team on a smaller boat had reportedly been sent ahead to look for Rees, but the search was eventually called off until daybreak.
Shortly after the aerial search resumed on Sunday morning, Ayris said, Rees’ body was found at about 9.30am. The Coral Adventurer left Lizard Island for a second time at 6.55pm.
‘It seems there was a failure of care’
Katherine Rees said her family was “shocked and saddened that the Coral Adventurer left Lizard Island after an organised excursion without my mum, Suzanne”.
“From the little we have been told, it seems that there was a failure of care and common sense.”
The Coral Expeditions chief executive said on Thursday that exactly what happened was yet to be established.
“We have expressed our heartfelt condolences to the Rees family and remain deeply sorry that this has occurred,” Fifield said in a statement.
“The circumstances of her tragic death are the subject of official investigations. We are fully cooperating with those investigations to determine the facts. For this reason, it would be inappropriate to comment further on the investigations while they are under way.
“We continue to provide our full support to the Rees family through this difficult time.”
The police are preparing a report for a coronial inquiry, which Katherine Rees hopes “will find out what the company should have done that might have saved Mum’s life”. Amsa and WorkSafe Queensland are also investigating.
On Friday, the Coral Adventurer was close to Prince of Wales Island in the Torres Strait. Amsa said it intended to board the ship when it arrived in Darwin. Part of the investigation would focus on why Rees may not have been accounted for during boarding, a spokesperson said.
‘Count the people’
David Beirman, an adjunct fellow in management and tourism at the University of Technology Sydney, said any failure to account for all passengers was “very unusual”.
“One of the standard things they always do when there is a shore excursion, of any sort, is they count the people who are leaving and they count the people who are coming back. It’s basic common sense,” he said.
“For whatever reason, it appears they didn’t do it as effectively as they might have done on this occasion.”
Former Coral Expeditions passengers have expressed surprise that a passenger could seemingly be unaccounted for.
“We have cruised the Kimberley coast on this small ship,” one wrote on Facebook.
“We had our names checked off a list when boarding the tender boat and checked off again when boarding the ship. It is beyond belief that the captain and crew would leave without everybody on board.”
Another Facebook user said she had travelled with Coral Expeditions in May and there were “so many checks” – including a number assigned to each passenger that was ticked off upon returning to the vessel.
“Many of [us] also watched for older solo travellers, making sure they weren’t alone,” the traveller wrote.
Despite the protocols, Beirman said there were “plenty” of cases of passengers being left behind. Notable examples include the case of eight passengers who scrambled to meet their ship after being left behind in São Tomé and Príncipe last year.
But the Great Barrier Reef, in particular, has a history of maritime misadventure.
In 1998, Tom and Eileen Lonergan died after their tour boat left while they were scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef. Officials believe they drowned or were eaten by sharks.
In 2008, a British holidaymaker and his American girlfriend, who survived for 19 hours in shark-infested waters off the reef, told how a rescue helicopter failed to spot them waving frantically for help.
In 2011, officials investigated a dive boat company that accidentally left behind a US tourist snorkelling at the reef.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: theguardian.com
