Trusting his gut leads man to his lost father
Luke Harrison’s gut feeling about where his father was missing in the bush may have saved his life.
Brent Harrison, 72, was missing in the Tararua Range southeast of Levin for three days.
He failed to return from a hike near the Ōhau Gorge on Monday. Search crews spent days combing the area for him, until his son Luke finally discovered him alive in dense bush, in fading light, on Wednesday evening. He was flown by helicopter to Palmerston North Hospital about 8.30pm and was recovering in hospital yesterday. After a police dog unit searched the area on Wednesday, members of Harrison’s family and friends set off with search and rescue team members about 6pm to continue the hunt.
Luke had been itching to go into the bush while he was waiting for the dog team to return.
He and his cousin Ben MacKay had been with members of the search and rescue team, but he had a feeling he knew where his father was – and so off he went with MacKay.
Once they got to the area where they suspected Brent would be, Luke started calling his father’s name. He heard a faint reply.
He kept calling out as they got closer to the voice.
“I started screaming, ‘I’m coming! I’m coming! I’ve got everything – it’s OK.’
“I'm just shocked we found him so quickly, randomly. [It’s] insane.”
They had only walked about an hour from the entrance to the Tararua Forest Park, but the bush was so dense that it was hard to get through the “cobwebs of vines” and took a long time just to walk metres.
“I’ve never been through bush that thick. What he must have gone through to get to that point!”
Brent couldn’t walk and was dehydrated. Luke believed that if they hadn’t found him, he would probably have come down with hypothermia overnight. “I reckon it would have been the end of him.”
After they set off a locator beacon, Brent and Luke were winched out by an air force helicopter while MacKay ran back to tell the others.
Brent had been about 50 metres off the track, and Luke said it was his intuition that alerted him to where his father was.
“I knew I would find him. It’s amazing that I found him. It blows my mind.
“That area of bush is massive – there are 50 people up there who have been looking for over two days.
“It’s just an inner feeling, something that goes beyond. Wanting to help my dad so badly. It’s fully intuition.”
Luke said he felt “immense joy” at finding his father alive.
Brent Harrison has Parkinson’s disease and his health condition most likely played a part in him getting lost.
Luke had dropped him off at the car park on Monday but said his father had been adamant he was going tramping and would have walked 10km from Levin to the forest track if Luke hadn’t taken him.
Brent had planned to go to Te Matawai Hut, which was about six or seven hours’ walk from the car park at the end of Poads Rd. He was an experienced tramper and been involved in running and multisport events all his life.
Luke said he wouldn’t be letting his father do something like this again.
“He was cold and had run out of his meds. If I hadn’t found him, I don’t think he would have made it through the night.”
He said his father was now recovering in hospital and doing well.
“There are no broken bones, but he’s got a hundred little scratches on his legs and he’s exhausted.”
Inspector Ashley Gurney thanked everyone involved in the expansive search. “Obviously, he has been through quite an ordeal after spending close to three days in the ranges, but the community rallied together determined for him to return home.”
Luke’s wife, Helen, said she was proud of her husband. “He’s a machine of a man on a mission.”
The family were grateful for the support of all the whānau, friends and other people who helped with the search.
More than 180 trampers have been involved in search and rescues in Tararua Forest Park between 2010 and 2017, with five deaths in the same decade ending in 2017.
– Additional reporting by Jonathan
Killick