Vanished at sea
The mysterious disappearance of Queenslander Carmel Brookes is still baffling Australian authorities six years later. The 60-year-old former official from the Foreign Affairs Department vanished while sailing off the coast of Thailand with her de facto partner Gerry Goeden in February 2012.
Dr Goeden, a prominent marine biologist, told authorities Carmel had been on the night watch and, when he awoke at 1.30am to relieve her, she was gone. Her body has never been found. Tragically, Gerry suffered heartbreak almost 30 years earlier, when his first wife Ellen, 37, died after falling off a cliff while the pair were picking ferns at Barron River Gorge near Cairns. Police questioned him over Carmel’s disappearance and searched several properties she owned, but the case remains a mystery.
Carmel’s friends and family have formed an action group to encourage Australian authorities to further investigate her disappearance.
“I just feel more should be done and she shouldn’t be forgotten,” former colleague Anna-lisa Willis has said. Close friend Michelle Black has called for a coronial investigation.
“I have lost a dear friend of 25 years,” she said. “I can’t let it rest – we have had no closure.”