Family plead for dad to come home
The wife of a funny and cheeky man missing for nearly a month is holding on to hope he will walk through the front door, even though she fears the worst.
Michael Tippett, 39, was last seen on foot in Opunake Rd, in Cardiff near the family home, west of Stratford on September 12. His wife, Safphire Tippett, and their two children, 15-year-old Oliver and 11-year-old Emily, haven’t stopped searching for him since and are pleading for him to come home.
‘‘Come home,’’ Safphire said, ‘‘our kids need him.
‘‘I think we are just holding on to that little bit of hope that he is going to come home.
‘‘We can’t deal with the other side of things.’’
The pair have been together for 22 years, meeting when Safphire was only 16. They married in 2014.
‘‘He always told me I whined about it so he would wait until I stopped moaning,’’ she laughed.
‘‘I just instantly fell in love with him. He thought he had bogeys because I kept on looking at him.’’
But Safphire admits that in the lead-up to Michael’s disappearance, things began to get rocky between the pair.
They ran the family farm together and with a rough three years of drought, stock illness and long hours, she believe it took a toll on Michael’s mental health.
‘‘But looking back it was depression and he had obviously got quite low,’’ she said through tears. Safphire said Emily was a ‘‘daddy’s girl’’ and he had nicknamed her Jellybean.
‘‘He was a really, really good dad. He was really loving and caring,’’ she said.
The family and police have continued to search for Michael since he disappeared.
He left home without his wallet, money or bank cards and was dressed in green farm overalls with a black-and-white shirt underneath, as well as grey-coloured gumboots.
On Friday, a drone was used to scour cliffs that were unable to be reached by foot.
A planned search for Michael was organised
10 days after he went missing but was cancelled after more than
250 people wanted to join in and the terrain was too dangerous for inexperienced searchers.
‘‘It got too big to handle and some of the terrain we wanted to go over through the farm had a good 80 foot drop,’’ she said.
Safphire said the best outcome was for him to walk through the front door but she doesn’t think that will happen.
‘‘It would give the kids some closure. I was talking to them the other day and they said: We just keep looking when we are driving, we are looking in cars, we are looking in trees, we are looking in bushes, we are looking in the gutters’,’’ she said.
She said the support from family, friends, police and searchers had been overwhelming.
A Givealittle page had been created to help the children maintain normality as financial pressures begin to mount.
Her advice to others going
through depression was to get help and for family and friends to offer support.
‘‘Make them get help. If they won’t go to the doctors, get the doctor to come to them.
‘‘Just do what you can,’’ she said.
A police media spokesperson said police were still making inquiries into Michael’s disappearance and anyone with information on his whereabouts can call 105.