ISLAND LIFE

It wasn’t long after this photograph was taken that Tasmania Police Senior Constable Chris Williams’ grim expression changed to one of relief on being told the missing father-and-son bushwalkers he’d been searching for in Tasmania’s rugged south-west wilderness had been found.

Constable Williams, pictured here in a makeshift command centre at Lake Pedder Wilderness Lodge, Strathgordon, was in charge of the search for John and Stephen Ward, who got lost last month while trying to complete the Scott’s Peak circuit.

The photograph shows Constable Williams at a low point during the threeday search involving 25 walkers and three helicopters. “I was of the realisation that we were basically running out of time,” he says. “I’m normally pretty jovial and have a smile on my face, but I know I was thinking, ‘If we don’t find them soon, they’re not going to last’. It was up to us to find them and get them out.”

He remembers feeling struck by the magnitude of the situation. “I put myself in the father’s shoes and wondered what I’d be going through out there if I was with my son. I’ve got three kids and I could just picture the roller-coaster of emotions [the father and son] must have been going through.”

The Wards were eventually found by members of the search team not far from a walking track – to the relief of all involved. “You feel relief and a sense of accomplishment that you’ve co-ordinated a search and, as a result of you putting people in those locations, the missing bushwalkers have been found,” he says.