SHADOW FALLS ON NOWHERE TOWN
Mount Wilson was a sanctuary for the rich and private but that peace has been shattered by the shocking events of the past week, writes Emily Burley
It’s the nowhere town suddenly everywhere for a very sinister reason. Mount Wilson is an undeniably beautiful corner of the Blue Mountains – home to the uber rich and host to the most lavish of events. The village’s main road, The Avenue, winds around the mountainside, sheltered by a dense canopy of trees growing either side of it.
In autumn, the peak tourism season, those trees stun in shades of crimson and gold and bushwalkers crunch through town on the leaf litter.
But at this time of year the leaves are green; the kind of green some parts of the country could only dream of, and thick enough to seclude Mount Wilson’s stately and historic homes.
The community is as insular as they come. There is no coffee shop in Mount Wilson, or general store. No takeaway, no petrol station, no ATM. No public phones and barely any mobile service.
For those who visit it’s the perfect escape. For the limited few who live there – 35 people year-round – it’s the ultimate private oasis.
Arriving in town from the direction of Sydney there’s a fire station to the left, and a former school turned artists’ cottage next door. Further around a bend and nearing the end of The Avenue is St George’s Anglican Church, visited by a minister once per month.
What you won’t see from the road is the real reason people visit – grand homes and their even grander gardens.
Hidden away behind tall gates and long driveways, the properties, of which most are holiday rentals, must be seen to be believed.
The gardens, mostly exotic and many heritage, are open to the public at various times throughout the year and have attracted high-profile events including the nuptials of AFL star Buddy Franklin and model Jesinta Campbell, and television presenter Julie Snook and actor Hugo Johnstone-Burt.
“It’s the state’s garden enclave for the rich and hyper-rich,” said Martin Schoeddert, whose company Iris Property has bought, sold and rented in the town for well over a decade.
“It’s a very wealthy community and it’s a tight-knit community, with the average hold on a property 30-plus years.
“For a five-week block in autumn we’ll get thousands of visitors in a day but for the rest of the year it goes back to this sleepy little place.”
Tree branches are down across much of the village, with one part of Mount Irvine Road blocked by a fallen tree. A significant storm passed through the region on Wednesday night, with damaging winds wreaking havoc.
It was the second storm the community had weathered in just one week. The other, far darker and unlike anything Mount Wilson had seen before, centred on one of its premier venues as the last known location of a missing girl, and ended with the cruellest of outcomes.
“It’s a tragedy and just so horrific,” Schoeddert said.
“It’s unusual and shocking for the community but I suppose it can happen anywhere.”
Nine-year-old Charlise Mutten was reported missing last Friday morning. She had been with her mother Kallista, 37, and her mum’s fiance Justin Stein, 31, at Wildenstein, one of Mount Wilson’s best known venues and perhaps best hidden, tucked away on the remote and muddied Shadforth Rd.
Police, who first went public with Charlise’s disappearance late on Friday, said she was reportedly last seen at an unknown time the previous day.
“A command post has been established at the Mount Wilson Rural Fire Service Station with members from the RFS and SES assisting police from the Blue Mountains Police Area Command, Police Rescue, the Dog Unit and Polair,” the initial police alert said.
By early Saturday the search had stepped up, with hundreds of emergency workers and volunteers scouring bushland.
The media had also arrived, startling the town awake and fuelling commentary around the search. The focus of the conversation was the early involvement of the State Crime
Command’s homicide squad. Was there more to the story than a missing kid, or had police learned from the unsolved case of William Tyrrell?
Searchers remained in the bush for five days and in that time information about the family began to trickle out.
Charlise had been raised by her grandmother Deborah at Tweed Heads on the state’s border with Queensland, but was visiting her mother at the lavish Blue Mountains property, owned by Stein’s family, when she vanished.
Mutten was a longtime ice addict who was jailed in 2017 for dangerous driving causing death, after crashing and killing a friend while the drug was in her system. It’s understood she was clean when Charlise’s grandmother allowed the visit for two weeks over the school holidays.
Throughout the search police had been retracing Stein’s movements, which they allege included buying sandbags, refuelling his boat, attempting to launch it at Sydney and then visiting the Colo River in the days before Charlise was reported missing. Police allege Stein drove around with Charlise’s body for five hours in a bumbling attempt to dispose of it.
Late on Tuesday night detectives made the sickening find that dashed the hopes of searchers and the country. Charlise’s body was discovered in a barrel beneath a bridge at the Colo River. Police allege Stein was responsible, and charged him with murder that same night.
“What we are sure of is that (we will allege) the accused we have charged with murder was responsible for placing her in the barrel and placing the barrel in bushland,” Deputy Commissioner Dave Hudson told media the following day.
Stein did not apply for bail at his initial court date on Wednesday and will reappear in March. Police are waiting to speak to Ms Mutten, who is reportedly pregnant with Stein’s child and was hospitalised after a breakdown on the first day of the search, but have no evidence to suggest she was involved in Charlise’s death. The Daily Telegraph on Friday reported Mutten was staying at a Lower Portland caravan park an hour’s drive from Wildenstein when police allege her daughter was killed.
On Wednesday night about 150 mourners gathered for a vigil at Charlise’s Tweed Heads school.
“Her bright smiling face and her beautiful nature shone as bright as her spirit is now,” an older classmate said, as attendees lit candles in her memory.
Charlise’s disappearance and alleged murder will be the first time many people have heard of Wildenstein, or Mount Wilson. Although popular among the elite, both had remained relatively under the radar.
The venue has been forced to suspend commenting on its social media and was savaged via Google reviews. The village, meanwhile, has bunkered down, with just one person seen there during a visit on Thursday.
“It’s always been close-knit and will be even more so after this,” said the man, who asked not to be identified.
How the community will recover, and how it will separate its image from the horrific events alleged to have happened there, remains to be seen, but it’s a crisis faced by many towns before it.
Kendall on the Mid-North Coast was put on the map after three-year-old William Tyrrell vanished while visiting family in 2014. The mystery, which remains unsolved and continues to play out to this day, devastated the town for the longest time but steps have been made to lift morale.
One local publican named his winning racehorse Kendall as a small way to bring joy back to the community.
A hotel at Childers, Queensland where 15 backpackers died in a deliberately-lit fire in 2000 has been rebuilt as a shrine to those who perished and a reminder of the awful event for which the town has become known.
And in Snowtown, South Australia, where eight bodies were discovered in barrels hidden in an empty bank vault in 1999, the town has embraced its gruesome past, with some locals even selling sick barrel-themed souvenirs.
“Community recovery has been best shown to be achieved through arts and culture and community,” advisory expert Sue Cato said. “If a community can be doing things to bring people together and help them heal, and let them feel the community is strong and robust, that’s where recovery happens.”
Mount Wilson has only just begun to navigate its recovery, but the struggle won’t come close to the one faced by family and friends shattered by young Charlise’s death.