Markets 
A fresh search for the missing Nannup Four will take place next month as geologists, buoyed from a successful search in Tasmania, head to WA for a week-long expedition.
Chantelle McDougall, Leela McDougall, Tony Popic and Gary Felton mysteriously vanished from their Roberts Road property in July 2007.
A note left at the home said they were moving to Brazil. They have never been seen or heard from since.
The family and their lodger, Popic, who lived in a caravan on their South-West property, mysteriously vanished, leaving behind wallets, credit cards and dirty plates on the table.
They were last seen in a Busselton car yard north of Nannup heading towards Perth, where they sold Ms McDougall’s car for $4000. The money remains untouched in her bank account.
McDougall’s parents, Jim and Cathy McDougall, have not given up hope of finding their daughter and granddaughter safe and well and earlier this year Cathy’s brother Barry McIntosh, launched a fundraiser to push for another search, 20 years after their disappearance.
It piqued the interest of a team of experts who came together five months ago in Tasmania to search for the remains of missing backpacker Celine Cremer.
“We decided after that search that we would continue searching for people,” geologist Matt Strickland said.
Strickland is the vice president of an Australian volunteer-led non-profit organisation and registered charity that assists families in searching for missing persons in remote or challenging environments.
The group call themselves Follo, ‘Find Our Lost Loved Ones’, that uses specialised tracking frameworks to bring closure to families with the use of dogs, excavators and laser scanning equipment.
They also recruit civilian volunteers and specialists for targeted field searches, working alongside official police search data and historical clues to re-examine difficult terrain.
The search will take place over a week in September and a 400x500sqm area in Northcliffe about 28 kilometres south of Pemberton in WA’s south-west has been earmarked as the most probable location of the missing four.
Two laser scans of the region have already taken place “trying to look for abnormalities that might help the search team narrow down or identify areas of interest”.
But in order to conduct the search, the team needs financial backing.
Chantelle’s uncle has so far raised just over $5,000, stating that he conducted his own search last year with no luck.
“I have had to watch my sister Cath and her husband James go through hell over the years not knowing what has happened to them,” he wrote on a GoFundMe page.
“My niece Chantelle and her then seven-year-old daughter Leela disappeared off the face of the earth from Nannup WA.
“I conducted a search in July last year and I have identified another location I wish to search with cadaver dogs.
“The first search was hampered by rain and thick bush after the fire in 2015 and re-growth caused by that fire.”
Follo has reached out to WA mining companies for some financial backing for the search and are hoping to grow as an organising to help others find missing loved ones in similar situations.
With 9 News Perth.
From our partners
Read the full article here
