Police Life: The Experts podcast - Season 2 Episode 3: Looking for Luke transcript

Australia held its breath for five days in 2015, as a massive search was underway for 11-year-old Luke Shambrook. Luke had gone missing from his family’s campsite in rugged bushland.

In this episode, we take you through the highs and lows of the search, and into the decisions and moments that mattered.

Listen to this episode and other episodes of Victoria Police's official podcast, Police Life: The Experts.

Transcript of Police Life: The Experts podcast, Season 2 Episode 3: Looking for Luke

Introduction: You’re listening to Police Life: The Experts, a Victoria Police podcast, shining a light on our people, and their extraordinary skills.

[Sound of bush and a helicopter]

Audio from ABC News report - Senior Sergeant Greg Paul: There’s no sugar coating it, this is life threatening. This is actually very dangerous weather, it’s down to zero, perhaps sub-zero up here in the hills.

Voiceover: It’s June 2020, a 14-year old boy with autism, William Callaghan, has gone missing at Mount Disappointment, high in the Victorian alps. There are grave fears for his safety as the operation goes into a third day.

Victoria Police’s Search and Rescue Squad and other agencies are in this for the long haul.

Every search is a chance to learn more from those that came before and lessons from a search five years earlier would help bring William home to his family.

[Sound of footsteps through dense bush]

Voiceover: April 3, 2015. An 11-year-old boy vanishes from a bush campground at Lake Eildon on Good Friday. Luke Shambrook’s frantic parents Rachel and Tim reveal their son is autistic and mostly non-verbal. He may not respond to the calls of rescuers and could even avoid them.

Rachel Shambrook: One of the key points we said to them was, “When you're out looking for Luke, you're going to have to spot him and go to him because he will not come to you”.

But I guess what struck a chord with me is how quickly things were actioned. And that, I guess, gave me an appreciation of the fact that people were really quite attentive right from the beginning.

Voiceover: Whether an operation is short or long, the clock is always ticking for the Search and Rescue team. They call it the timeframe for survival. How long an individual like Luke can last alone in the elements, given the conditions, his skills and the possibility of a miracle.

The search for Luke would go on to the very edge of survival and beyond if necessary.

Senior Sergeant Greg Paul: We're not doctors, we're not experts. We've got some experience, but we refer to the doctors. And the feedback we got was that if he was out there still he would probably be gone, not likely to be alive.

My name's Greg Paul, I'm a senior sergeant attached to the Search and Rescue Squad. This is my 40th year in Victoria Police. I've been in the involved in the Search and Rescue Squad on and off since 1989.

Oh, and by the way, I wasn't part of the Search and Rescue Squad during that search. I was actually a sergeant at a local police station. I had been in a member of the Search and Rescue Squad for many years and I'd got out and I'd transferred to Marysville, a little town not far from Eildon.

Voiceover: Scenic Lake Eildon was part of Greg Paul’s patch that day. It’s a popular holiday spot for Melbournians, set amongst 27,000 hectares of national park. Lake Eildon is just 100 kilometres north-east of Melbourne. It’s a perfect Easter getaway for campers and caravaners. The Shambrooks were annual visitors with their three children: Lauren, Matthew and eldest Luke.

Luke loved the familiar sights and sounds of Lake Eildon and wandered away for just a minute from their tent at Candlebark campground. His father Tim went to bring him back.

Rachel Shambrook: Tim went off and I'm thinking, “It's taken a while to get Luke back”. And Tim was really only following Luke, like maybe a minute after Luke went. We were all there at the time. So, Tim went off, you know, “I’ll go and get him back” sort of thing. And then after a few minutes I'm going, “Tim hasn’t come back, better go find out what's happening”. And so I went the other way. And both Tim and I were out there and neither of us could see Luke in terms of the open expanse of the lake.

Voiceover: Rachel and Tim reported Luke’s disappearance to the park rangers and continued their own search.

Rachel Shambrook: My strongest memory was coming back to the camping area and between the park rangers and the local police, laying maps out on the bonnet. And that was like, “Oh, this is for real”. And that still gives me goosebumps.

They said, “Look, we're not talking life and death overnight temperatures, but he'll be very uncomfortable”, and things like that. And that was sort of at that point, and I can remember Tim and I were sitting on camping chairs, sort of gazing down at the lake, willing Luke to come back. You know, it was like, “Where are you? You must be out there somewhere. You can't have got that far”.

[Suspenseful music]

Senior Sergeant Greg Paul: An 11-year-old boy, autistic, Non-verbal. We were told he had a physical limitation with his walking. I mean, he could walk, no worries. But there’s limitations there.

Rachel Shambrook: So, they asked for a photo of Luke, and fortunately we had actually cleared the camera because we're going away. The day before we left I was just mucking around with the camera, having cleared everything off. Luke was at the breakfast table eating breakfast and I just took a couple of photos.

[Sound of camera shutter]

Voiceover: Luke was wearing a t-shirt that read, “Boy from the bush”, and that was the photo that went out to the public on day one of the search.

Audio from ABC News report:

News reporter: Rescue crews have spent the afternoon searching for a missing 11-year-old boy in central Victoria. The boy was last seen walking away from the Candlebark Campground in the Fraser National Park near Lake Eildon. He disappeared around half-past nine this morning. Police and volunteers are searching for the boy.

Voiceover: The story of the little boy lost captured the hearts of the nation.

Audio from 7 News report:

News reporter: His dad thought he was in the care of his gran but he wasn’t and, when he realised he was missing, he had a quick look and then called police. The Police Air Wing, the Dog Squad, Water Police have been searching, plus SES volunteers and rangers, as well as some volunteers who are campers and don’t even know Luke, have joined in, plus Luke’s family.

Voiceover: Soon the roads into the campground would be jammed with traffic. People from all over the state were descending on Lake Eildon to offer their help in the search. Managing the response, while also finding Luke was a delicate balance for Victoria Police.

Senior Sergeant Greg Paul: We had volunteers coming from all angles. Even on that first day, e got SES involved, Bush Search and Rescue. We got them called out, and they came up there that day. The local cycling club, they volunteered to help search. We had a bunch of people turn up with canoes.

It was people coming from all over the place that were dropping what they were doing, they just happened to be in the area, or we'd called them out and that escalated. That escalated, you know, Saturday, Sunday.

Voiceover: While Greg managed the search efforts on the ground, another layer of management was co-ordinating the entire operation.

Assistant Commissioner Libby Murphy: I'm Libby Murphy, and I'm an assistant commissioner with Victoria Police.

Luke had gone missing on the Friday morning and I was working the afternoon shift at that time as the duty officer for that area. And I got sent over as a police commander.

At the time, I was the detective inspector of Eastern Region Division 3, which covered the area of Eildon and part of a team, or a divisional leadership team, that consists of a superintendent, probably four inspectors and then two senior sergeants.

So, in Eastern Region Division 3, it's an area that covers Mansfield, Mount Buller, you have four-wheel driving areas up around the areas of Jamieson and Woods Point. You have people out on roads or like trail bikes and those sorts of things. So, it's not unusual. You've got Mount Disappointment.

So, you have people who are reported as overdue or missing all the time. So, it's something as a duty officer or an inspector who's in charge of something on the road that you actually manage and forecast and understand the environment and what services you need and those sorts of things. So, probably more a business-as-usual thing in a rural area than it is in metropolitan.

So, it was agreed that I would go over as the police commander. Make sure that the structure was set up in line with the principles that we have for searches.

Voiceover: As the hours passed with no sign of Luke, a search and rescue plan was swinging into action. Communication with the family of the missing person is a key element.

Assistant Commissioner Libby Murphy: We specifically assigned family liaison people because we thought it was important for Rachel and Tim to have the two set police members. Like, the consistency and constant reassurance through having the same people there all the time rather than having to re-explain things. And that was, Rachel Walsh and Ian Hamill. They did swap over of shifts.

Voiceover: Greg Paul would also keep the family informed about the progress.

Rachel Shambrook: I think the thing that struck me about him was his gentleness. Going about his job, very professional. Gave us the updates from the point of view of search and rescue as opposed to the local policeman giving us updates. In a way, that was showing care of, ‘we’re the family’. Clearly had a sense of appreciating what things would be like if he was standing in our shoes, yeah. And he was able to impart that by being open and honest, but not going places he didn't need to go.

Voiceover: Greg remembers the moment he met the Shambrooks at their campsite on the morning of day one.

Senior Sergeant Greg Paul: Rachel Shambrook was pointed out to me. “This is the mother of Luke, and she's sitting over there”. So I looked at Rachel and she was sitting on a rock on her own, facing down towards the lake, and she looked a picture of someone that's just in the worst time of their life.

“My son is missing. My son is missing and I don't know where he is. I don't know what to do”.

Voiceover: Greg’s heart breaks for Rachel and he wants to reassure her, but he knows that managing expectations is crucial. Never promise what you cannot control.

As he approaches Rachel, his mind turns back almost 30 years, before his time at the Search and Rescue Squad, to another Victoria Police search very similar to Luke Shambrook’s. In June 1987, another autistic boy, enjoying the outdoors with his family, became separated on a hike.

Senior Sergeant Greg Paul: A young fellow called Paddy Hildebrand. He went ahead, from his family down in Wilson's Promontory, and there was a large-scale search for him. Lots of people involved, hundreds of people involved. And I'm talking police, I'm talking SES, I'm talking BSAR, you know, volunteer searchers, helicopters, horses.

Voiceover: With every resource thrown at the search, it was assumed Paddy would soon be found. The search coordinator made a promise to the family that he would later regret.

Senior Sergeant Greg Paul: When he saw the mother of Paddy Hildebrand on the day he arrived to coordinate this large scale search, he said to her, you know, “We're going to find your boy”.

And they never did.

They searched, and they searched. Not just for days, but for weeks and well beyond the timeframe that you would expect him to be alive for. Well beyond that. He was never found.

That was haunting. That was haunting for the member that was involved in that. That stuck in my mind. So I didn't say that.

I said, you know, “We'll do our best. We want to find your boy. We're going to do everything we can to find your boy. We'll do it”. But I was very careful not to actually step over that line because as much as we would try, we cannot guarantee that's going to happen.

So, this thought of having hundreds of people searching through bushland and having an expectation that they're going to be found because you've got so many resources isn't true. It’s actually not true. You know, we can't search everywhere. We can't search every millimetre. We need to make decisions as to what the most likely success is. But there's plenty of instances where we haven't found them.

Voiceover: Paddy Hildebrand’s disappearance remains an open case. Every search is a learning experience and Luke’s case would lead to further improvements to how Victoria Police runs these operations. It would also bring a new understanding of how to bring more kids like Luke home and sooner.

Assistant Commissioner Libby Murphy: The longer a search goes, the more concerned, you are because you sort of start thinking, “Why is this person, why is this child not turning up?”.

Obviously Luke's vulnerabilities with autism were cause for concern for us because we knew that perhaps there would be different things at play that we would have to consider.

Interestingly enough, I actually lecture on emergency management and a few things to our inspector and above cohort at the Academy. And this is one of the things that we talk about where I learnt a lot from this search, and that I've taken away in terms of perhaps you shouldn't have a lot of assumptions that you have about particular things.

And that includes, not the impact that autism had, but perhaps the things that you need to understand and the testing of your own thinking to make sure that you're actually getting everything right and that you're absorbing and considering things that you need to at any given time.

Voiceover: For Greg Paul, day one was about getting the search underway and dealing with the logistical challenges.

Senior Sergeant Greg Paul: We had the map laid out on the top of the four-wheel drive. There’s no sort of pristine command post, we're just there on the scene. It's an impromptu forward command post, basically, and we're doing the best we could with what we had, helping each other out. But, yeah, it's about escalating.

But the trouble we had was it's Good Friday, Friday morning, and of course all the roads were chockablock full of cars and people going on holidays and so forth. So these specialist units, although they’re now responding or getting organised to respond, they’re caught in traffic and you know, traffic snarl. So there's delays. Some of them couldn't get up there until in the afternoon on that first day.

Voiceover: The command post soon moved from the bonnet of a four-wheel drive to the ranger’s hut and the team began to analyse what they had. Every investigation begins with collecting reliable information. Libby Murphy’s notes from the search cover the early steps in trying to understand the boy that they were looking for.

Assistant Commissioner Libby Murphy: He does like water, and will, for want of a better term, dip into water rather than go for a full swim. Doesn't like loud noises. Scared of fireworks. That, he does like dark spaces.

[Suspenseful music]

Voiceover: Luke’s affinity with water was a matter of concern. If he was in the lake, Luke was already deceased. Rachel told police about another family trip to Lake Eildon that confirmed the danger.

Rachel Shambrook: On this particular occasion, he actually waded in. He didn't go under, but he did go in the water. It created huge alarm bells for my sister and my mum who were there, in the sense that they did physically pull him out because he probably couldn't have got himself, he probably could have got out, but not easily.

Senior Sergeant Greg Paul: So the water was a bit of a focus early on. And, so very quickly, we gathered who we could. And we were fortunate because lots and lots of people were coming up and offering their help to, you know, fellow campers and other campsites, other families were looking around for Luke and, we quickly got people to walk around the edges of the lakes looking for footprints going into the mud.

The prime aim is to find them alive. And whilst looking in the water is important because that might resolve the situation quickly. But if he's in the water, he's in the water. He’s already deceased. He's already gone.

So we were making decisions about who's going to search where and when. The priority is to look in the places where they're going to be found alive.

Assistant Commissioner Libby Murphy: We decided to test our thinking on the way Luke would react and sort of spread outside that thinking and said to Rachel and Tim, “Well, who else has contact with Luke that we could ask questions of?”. So we ended up with his occupational therapist.

She offered us pearls of wisdom because she had information about the way Luke would behave when he was away from Rachel and Tim, whereas the inputs that we'd had initially were only from Rachel and Tim about what he was like in the family dynamic. So that was helpful to us, actually.

Rachel Shambrook: She was able to give them a clearer picture of his personality, his sensory needs, his emotional regulation, and all of those sorts of things, and just little practical things like calling his name. And she came up with the ideas of calling out his name and things he likes. Play music that he likes and things like that. And some of the things that they took on came from her as his OT. And I know, I guess in subsequent rescues, particularly for individuals on the autism spectrum, I know they've tapped into things that they learnt.

One of the key points we said to them was, “When you're out looking for Luke, you're going to have to spot him and go to him because he will not come to you”. They said, “Tell us about autism. Tell us about Luke. Tell us something so we can effectively have a deeper sense of how he might operate in this sort of situation, in this sort of environment”.

But we said to them, “If there's a track there, he'll follow that”. And we also said to them, “Please don't underestimate his capabilities”.

[Suspenseful music]

Voiceover: By day two, Greg Paul was supporting the Search and Rescue Squad, which had taken over the search coordination role. They were working within a search area of several square kilometres, including the mountainous terrain that surrounds Lake Eildon.

Senior Sergeant Greg Paul: There was a couple of sightings in different areas that didn't quite match together. But this story about, you know, him liking the water or interested in the water was a focal point. And the other thing that was mentioned that he would find it difficult to walk up these steep hills because he had that issue with his walking and, you know, it was suggested that, whilst he could walk, he could walk up the hills, but he'd find that difficult and he probably wouldn't do that. So we can't search everywhere. But often when someone goes missing in rugged terrain or mountainous terrain, they'll go to point of least resistance, which in general is downhill.

So someone that's going missing from one of the high mountains, for example, we prioritise the gullies and we try and, you know, search the gullies.

That's not to say that we ignore the spurs. We do search the spurs as well. But in the case of Luke Shambrook, he's already down the low point. The campsite’s down near the lake. So there is no downhill.

Assistant Commissioner Libby Murphy: So we were obviously searching for Luke in the bush. We had our Water Police out on the water obviously doing the searches in the water areas, but we had to be sure that we considered other things. So we started gathering names of people who'd signed into the park. And I'm not being alarmist here, but we checked names against things like registered sex offender registers and making sure that there's people in the park that wouldn't give us cause for alarm.

I know that at one stage during the search, some kid's underwear had been found in a toilet, but we quickly eliminated that, sent detectives there.

Rachel Shambrook: They were taking us into places in terms of our thoughts that we ourselves probably didn't entertain. One of their questions was, “If someone pulled up on the side of the road and offered Luke a lift, would he go?”. And we said, “Yeah, you betcha he would”. Because his life revolves around so many people. He goes in other people's cars, he travels on a mini bus, he catches a train. He has someone saying, “Come with me, Luke. We're going to the city today” or whatever.

Senior Sergeant Greg Paul: Every job, we've got to look outside the square here. They might not be missing. There might be something else. There might be a crime. We don't know.

But you've always got to consider that it could be something else.

[Suspenseful music]

Voiceover: With no trace of Luke to guide them, Greg and the team had to remain disciplined, executing their search patterns and logging every step meticulously. On the afternoon of day two, it seemed to pay off.

Senior Sergeant Greg Paul: The group found his hat, right, his beanie, and we've gone, “Oh thank goodness”, you know. Hang on. That was an area that was searched yesterday. There’s a group thoroughly searched that area yesterday and nothing was found.

There's a hat there. Right, that means he's walked back into the area and he's dropped his hat. So you know, that's a “Eureka!” moment. That was a really positive sort of thought process.

I was in the forward command post when I heard that. And, that was a great moment. You've got to be careful not to kneejerk react to that sort of information. You can't just change everything. But we certainly allocated resources and searchers to that area and to search that area.

Voiceover: But the assumptions from that beanie would soon be dashed when it was shown to Luke’s parents Rachel and Tim.

Rachel Shambrook: And that's another story about the wrong beanie and all that.

Tim Shambrook: Yeah, I dropped my beanie and within five or 10 minutes they'd found it. And they thought it was Luke’s.

Rachel Shambrook: Well they came back to the tent, and I was there, and they said, “Is this Luke’s beanie?”, and I go, “Yeah, yeah that’s it. Oh hold on, no no, that's the wrong beanie”. Because Luke and Tim interchange beanies all the time.

Senior Sergeant Greg Paul: It's Dad's hat. And what happened was Dad had been searching as well, and Dad dropped the hat. Dad had the same hat as Luke, it was same hat, you know, same colour, same design and so forth. So, you know, that was, you know, a false lead, you know, disappointment.

[Suspenseful music]

Voiceover: The evening of day two, after the false lead of the beanie, was a low point.

By day three, some media outlets were speculating that Luke was hiding from searchers, but Rachel knew it wasn’t as simple as that. Searchers would have to go to Luke, he wasn’t going to come to them.

Rachel Shambrook: That's not because he was going to be afraid. That was not because he didn't want to be found. It was not because, as the media put it, that he was hiding. Luke has never hidden from us in his entire life. And they made out that he'd be hiding in a wombat hole. That was just a media thing.

Voiceover: While Luke wasn’t hiding, he was proving very difficult to find. Search and Rescue members are trained to find people who may not respond to the calls of rescuers.

Senior Sergeant Greg Paul: Another search that happened in Marysville’s patch while I was a sergeant there, where a lady went missing and she was suicidal and we couldn't find her.

A police dog was sent in and we purposely left around her vehicle pristine. We didn't have anyone go near that area overnight and into the next morning until the dog got there.

The dog, remarkably, air-scented that person from 300m away. And tracked towards this person. There she was. She'd been in the bush. The previous afternoon into the night we had 50 people walking around looking for her.

Voiceover: With no signs or confirmed sightings of Luke, search teams were working into the night.

Senior Sergeant Greg Paul: Searching at night is interesting. It's, there's advantages and disadvantages. The disadvantages are obvious; you can't see as well, so it's slower. Also, you've got hazards. The searchers are going to not necessarily see the dangers, you know, the logs and things to trip over, twigs or branches to bump into, you know, so there’s all of that.

But there's also some advantages. I mean, noises can be heard a little bit further away at night. If you set a fire, you know, smoke, the smell of a fire, you know, that tends to get go further at night. People could see a fire from a longer distance away.

[Bush sounds]

Rachel Shambrook: They said, if you feel up to it, we'd like you and Tim to go out and walk the track at night and call his name, because then if Luke's there, he's hearing your voices not the multitude of everything else and helicopters whirring. And still even now, it’s giving me goosebumps at the thought of what we went through.

But we had to do it because evening of day three, no news, no sighting, no beanie. I guess we're torn between the nature of doing that with, “What if we don’t?”.

Eventually we got to the point of calling out his name. But your voice at that time of night, when you’re emotionally drained, physically drained, to actually call out his name and hear the desperation in our own voices, hearing our own voices in the dark at night, and because it was quiet, that's your sort of undoing as well.

[Bush sounds and suspenseful music]

Voiceover: Day four. The situation was looking dire. After three nights in the wilderness, Luke was facing the prospect of rain and falling temperatures. Greg and other senior officers were trying to challenge their own thinking and come up with the best way to use the flood of volunteers.

Senior Sergeant Greg Paul: So we're getting feedback from the searchers. But what we do with search groups – this is the groups that we're confident that they're going to be okay in the bush – we give them GPSs and they search, they navigate, they record what they've done, how they've done it, what they saw, what they didn't see. They come back and they tell us, they tell the search coordinator that important information.

Then their GPS is downloaded, and we get a track log, we can actually see where they went. Now the track logs don't give the full story because it might be, let's say it might be 15 or 10 people in a search group and there might be only one GPS, but we'll have a log as to where that – we’ll have a line on the map if you like, a digital, you know where that particular GPS had been. And we'll say, “Okay, well, we’re recording who's in that group, you know, which organisation they’re from, who was the leader, etcetera. They searched this particular gully in this particular way at this particular time between this and this time”.

Once you search an area that doesn't that's not the end of the story, because if a person's still mobile, they could quite easily walk back into the area that's already been searched. So once we were eliminating areas, they're not really eliminated.

Audio from Nine News report - News reporter: A massive rescue operation across the toughest of terrains.

[Sound of feet walking through thick bushland]

Day four of the search for Luke Shambrook – police throwing everything into the mission. Divers scoured the nearby lake, the Dog Squad and mounted police patrolled the rugged bush, along with search and rescue experts and countless volunteers.

Search volunteer 1: We’ve got an autistic son as well, so we know what it’s all about. So whatever we can do, you do try to help.

Search volunteer 2: We had three carloads of people with probably a dozen of us. If people aren’t looking, he’s not going to be found.

News reporter: The Shambrooks’ heartache, growing by the hour is only comforted by the hundreds of people dedicated to finding their boy.

Assistant Commissioner Libby Murphy: So TV, radio, it invoked quite an emotive response from the community and one of the challenges that we had was actually, having so many people turning up to help and it became very difficult in a small, centralised location.

And again – whilst we understand communities need and want and of course, we're so grateful that people did turn up and, you know – it's really hard, when you look at the terrain and the geography and all the things that you have to cover off, when you have people who may have their own challenges due to, to age, physical abilities and those sorts of things, to actually try and steer that.

Voiceover: Managing the flood of volunteers and media crews put pressure on the command post at Candlebark campground.

Assistant Commissioner Libby Murphy: And then the parks hut that we were operating out of was also way too small, became, in terms of probably from a community perspective, the economy of scale wasn't a good thing for us. So, we were really bunched in and I don't think, in hindsight, that was a good thing. So I would do things differently.

Senior Sergeant Greg Paul: We've got the police catering people, there's buses coming up from Melbourne bringing volunteers up. There’s hundreds of people just turning up and wanting to help and going, “Oh you know, I'm here, where can I help?”. Well, what do you do with that? Well, we can't just send them away. And if we did send them away, they'd search anyway.

So that raises a problem with spontaneous volunteers, because we've got to be very careful not to get people hurt or lost and if we start giving them jobs and start sending them out, well who's responsible for them? We were very much focused on finding him alive for the duration of the search, actually. Although, with every passing hour it becomes less likely.

So you have this thing called the timeframe for survival alright? So there's also another thing called the timeframe for mobility. So that is how long will they survive for? Now that's very variable, every situation is different. It's very dependent on the terrain, the weather, the condition of the person, what they've eaten, the wind. It’s a whole range of variabilities when it comes to timeframe of survival. And of course, the timeframe survival is very different if the person's out on their own in, in the bush, which Luke was.

The feedback we got was that, if he was out there still, I think it was, he would probably be gone, not likely to be alive at the end of day four, I think it was. And so that information is something that we’ve got to think about. But that doesn't change the search. We continued to search, and we always do. We always continue to search beyond the timeframe for survival.

Voiceover: Luke’s parents were now fearing the worst – they were even preparing themselves for it.

Rachel Shambrook: You start looking in yourself and adjusting the line of, you know, “What's the outcome we're looking for here? What's the bar of expectation? How can I look after myself in this?”. And whilst I would never have verbally said it to anyone, other than Tim, I was planning his funeral.

Voiceover: Local police officer Ian Hammill continued to stay in touch with the family hour by hour, even if he didn’t have much to offer, he would regularly visit them where they could always be found, sitting out the front of their tent.

Rachel Shambrook: But the thing that I remember Ian most for was, “No news, no news”. Every time we walked up that jolly camping ground track, “No news, no news”. And that was hard, that was really hard.

Senior Sergeant Greg Paul: You can't get too distracted. But it's important to cater for the family and I think that might have happened a couple of times and that's when I might have had the conversation with Rachel and Tim. And this is another thing that came out of the search that we identified, that's an important role, a family liaison role.

So we developed some structure around that and some procedures around that, post that search you know, based on what we experienced and other searches, similar searches that were challenging. We don't always have a great relationship with the family of the missing person. Sometimes people are angry. Sometimes they get angry with Victoria Police or other searchers.

That's not the case for the Shambrook family, they were very, very positive and, you know, desperately, desperate and sad and anxious, of course, but positive in terms of, they could see what was going on they could see all the efforts that were going on and they appreciated it. It doesn't always work that way. Sometimes in large scale searches, people are angry.

Voiceover: Another important lesson from this search was how the canine unit was deployed and did not pick up Luke’s scent.

Senior Sergeant Greg Paul: The police dogs that we had at the time, and things have changed. The Victoria Police Dog Squad has got some specific training searching for missing people without necessarily having the aggressive, traditional general purpose police dog role, which is to bring down a fleeing you know, offender or track down someone that's just got out of a stolen car or done you know, a crime.

So, the police dogs that we had were general purpose dogs. So, they're trained to track human scent. They were just out there looking for somebody and the trouble is, as the search went on, we've got hundreds of people in the bush you know, we haven't got a pristine environment where nobody's there and the police dog’s just trying to pick up a human scent.

Rachel Shambrook: It's pouring with rain. Now, trying not to think, but losing hope pretty fast, yeah. And I can remember my cousin walking past and she said, “The rain, it's a good thing, Rachel. It's moisture on his lips”. And I remember going, “Yeah, but it's probably already too late”. So it sounded bad, it felt bad, it was day four. I personally started adjusting the bar of what's the outcome here and what's success look like now? We've had four days now; this is the fourth night, and Tim and I just sort of lay there going, “There's no way he's made it. We at least hope they find his body”.

[Suspenseful music]

Voiceover: As Rachel and Tim’s hope ebbed away, high on a spur nearby, a member of the volunteer organisation Bush Search and Rescue finds a vital clue.

Senior Sergeant Greg Paul: We were searching high ground as well as the lower areas, we had more assets in the lower areas because of the nature of the information we had, but we hadn't ignored the high areas and this Bush Search and Rescue group was doing a line search and the hat was found and, it was a dark-coloured beanie of a particular design. A description was given over the radio and some photographs were taken. It was his hat. It's Luke’s hat. Okay, so are we sure, sure it's not another hat? No, it's Luke’s hat. We got it confirmed with the family, that's his hat.

Voiceover: Luke’s parents said that this was indeed his hat. But this did not allay their fears… it suggested that Luke could have walked out of the search area.

Rachel Shambrook: We're now talking four days and we had said to them, “Don't underestimate him. He could have walked a long way. Yep, he takes a pretty cruisy, passive, laidback, sort of casual approach to life. But when he's intent on walking, and when he wants to move fast, he can move fast”.

So the little glimmers that came in, like they found the beanie. If they found the beanie on, say, maybe day two or three, there would have been that sense of renewed optimism. Day four, it was like, well, at least probably, yeah, they're in the right space. Although in my thinking, this is day four, and they found the beanie, he's had enough time. He's had four days' worth of walking, potentially, to have been in the hills and then end up somewhere else.

Senior Sergeant Greg Paul: So if he's got that high and we're talking about a pretty steep spur, pretty high up, what's to say he couldn't have gone further? So, you know, we didn't ignore the lower areas. Like I said, we were searching the high areas anyway, but we decided, well okay, let's put more resources, you know, on not only in those high areas, but the other side of Skyline Road and into the next watershed, you know. Which I said earlier, was happening to a limited extent over the previous few days, but the search coordinator put more resources into that area.

We were all anxious. We all wanted to get that result. The very worst thing for a searcher is not finding the person. That's the worst outcome, and that ticking clock is loud. We're all conscious of it. We know we're going to run out of time. At some point he is going to die. Now it may have happened already, we don't know. There's a chance he still could be alive. We've gotta find him.

[Tense music and rain sounds]

Voiceover: On day five, the rain had stopped but Luke was beyond what experts believed was his timeframe for survival. A miracle was still possible but becoming less likely by the hour. Searchers prepared themselves for the worst.

Senior Sergeant Greg Paul: From a coping mechanism, when we find a deceased person, we switch, we have to, the person is no longer alive. This is the way I think of it, because police divers, we deal with this sort of thing a lot. The way I handle it, and I think a lot of others do, is the person is no longer a person. This is just the remains.

And of course it's sad, but you can't afford to emotionally get, you know, drawn into that because you'd go insane. If you were too emotionally tied up with every single body you find, you would be in a bad place.

The chances of him being alive are slim, and we know that. While there's a possibility that he's alive, we're going to keep doing everything we possibly can to find him alive and rescue him. And that was the attitude we had.

Voiceover: But Luke’s dad Tim explains that their chances were looking too bleak by this point.

Tim Shambrook: The last night we had kind of given up that he was going to be alive, but they probably would still find him. So we kind of went through an initial grieving process.

[Helicopter sounds]

Voiceover: At 11:55am, Tactical Flight Officer Sergeant Brad Pascoe was flying over the search area in a police helicopter.

Sergeant Brad Pascoe: Out of the corner of my eye, I just caught a little flash of something. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to make me get the guys to turn the aircraft around and go back to have a further look.

Voiceover: When Brad zoomed in on that shape in the forest with the aircraft’s camera, he saw a face emerge from the thick bush. Back on the ground, Libby and Greg listen carefully to their police radios.

Assistant Commissioner Libby Murphy: I was there and heard not a rumbling, but a sort of, a building sort of to a crescendo where everyone's like, “Be quiet, be quiet, be quiet”.

And then it was sort of like, I think something of about, “Can you repeat?”.

Senior Sergeant Greg Paul: I remember the moment where it came over the radio that he's been located, and he was alive, he's moving.

Assistant Commissioner Libby Murphy: I think the whole room went up and lit up and you could hear the cheers, so that was great. And then the important thing for me out of that was to allow the message to be delivered to Rachel and Tim by someone they knew.

Tim Shambrook: We heard the helicopter and then suddenly we heard it come back.

Rachel Shambrook: We were still in the back of the tent, just tidying up with nothing else to do. So we were both in there and then I heard Ian call out my name, he said, “Rachel, are you there?” and I sort of stuck my head out the tent door, and Ian said, and I quote, “They've got him and he's okay”.

Senior Sergeant Greg Paul: That was just an amazing moment that that I think was, the ripple effect was not just us in the search, but throughout the community, throughout the state, throughout the nation, internationally. This story had gone across the globe. And he's been found. He's alive. That's just remarkable. And so it was just a feeling of elation.

Some people cried, some people, some seasoned searchers that have been involved in lots of jobs cried with joy. And that was a great moment.

Rachel Shambrook: And then we had this glimpse of them bringing Luke up on the stretcher. Now it was utter relief, but still quite concerning when I saw how crook he was. His skin looked dead, his eyes were so sunken, and I said, I remember turning around saying to Tim, “He's so unwell, Tim”. And I'd never seen Luke that unwell.

Senior Sergeant Greg Paul: He'd actually been on the move for a long time. He'd been, you know, it was described as a few marathons that he'd done. He was dehydrated. He was hypothermic, mildly hypothermic.

He was on the way out. If he hadn't have been found, at some stage he was going to pass away. And it probably, it may have been later in that day. Who knows?

We don't know where he went. Somebody jokingly said to us, he should be a trainer for the Australian Defence Force, because in survival techniques and evasion techniques, he was remarkable. And he was, he really was.

Rachel Shambrook: We heard the word miracle spoken by many of them, particularly in the aftermath. Even like the next day, and they came down to Melbourne to visit Luke in the Royal Children's Hospital and check in on him, whatever. And their, I guess their sense of elation and achievement and things like that was still all over them. And then really between the key people involved and the shaking of each other's hands, and the slapping on the back, and the whole sense of miracle was just hanging in the air.

Voiceover: There were many lessons learnt from that job, from managing the spontaneous volunteers, to having a consistent family liaison. And it also left an increased awareness of kids with autism and how to find them in the shortest possible time.

Audio from Sky News report:

News reporter: Hundreds of people have been out searching for William Callaghan. Last night was the second night that he would have been out in the cold.

Voiceover: All of this learning came to bear five years later in 2020, in the search for another brave young man with autism, 14-year-old William Callaghan on Mount Disappointment.

News reporter: They’ve increased the area they were looking at today because they wondered just how far Will might have wandered. But they were on horseback, they were on dirt bikes, they were in four-wheel drives, they were walking with their dogs, they were bush bashing and of course, then you had from the air, the helicopters and the like. Really quite an extraordinary logistical effort.

Police officer: We’ve been out there with our lights on, we’ve been playing Thomas the Tank Engine over our PA system. Will really likes Thomas the Tank Engine. We’ve had our lights flashing, we’ve had our sirens going and then we’re out there just listening.

Voiceover: Lessons from the search for Luke Shambrook were deployed in the operation to find William Callaghan, who was found safe and well after almost 48 hours alone in the bush.

Audio from ABC news report

Police officer: William was found safely at approximately 11:55 today. He was approximately 10 minutes' walk off the track in bushland. What an amazing result.

News reporter: Relief is just beginning to describe how people here were feeling, absolute joy.

Voiceover: And no one felt that joy more than William’s mum, Penny.

Penny Callaghan: I am really overwhelmed but more than anything, thank you everyone. I’m so grateful. You’re all amazing.

Assistant Commissioner Libby Murphy: Each time you do something like this, you learn and you get better. But the important bit for me is to teach others, as a leader, and not to hold that dear, but to allow lessons learnt for other people. And then what it can only result in is good community outcomes, which we're all looking for.

Voiceover: As for Luke Shambrook, he is now 21, has finished school and is embracing life. And thanks to the miracle on that mountain in April 2015, he still loves camping at Lake Eildon with his family every Easter.

His mum Rachel has been left in no doubt it was a miracle made possible by the devotion of police, professional and volunteer agencies and countless individuals.

Rachel Shambrook: I had a deep appreciation of how much these guys had put themselves out and lived for this moment themselves too. I remember saying, “You guys were doing your job, but your heart and soul was in this as much as anyone could possibly fathom.” And the, again, it's giving me goosebumps, huge sense of thanks and gratitude, particularly with the personal touch and the lengths they went to and the extent that they put themselves out in order to do something for our son.

Outro Voiceover: Police Life: The Experts is a Victoria Police production.

Your host is Belinda Batty.

This episode was written by Adam Shand.

Additional writing and research by Jesse Wray-McCann.

It was produced by Adam Shand and Jesse Wray-McCann.

The senior producer was Ros Jaguar.

Audio production and original music by Mat Dwyer.

Theme song by Veaceslav Draganov.

Executive produced by Beck Angel.

This podcast was created by the Media, Communications and Engagement Department at Victoria Police.

To learn more about the work of Victoria Police, go to police.vic.gov.au.