Disappearance Of Damian McKenzie

Damian McKenzie's disappearance has become known as one of the more weird missing person mysteries in Australian history.

Background:

 

Damian was born in 1964 to parents Marcia and Peter. At the time of his disappearance, he stayed with his parents and siblings in the Cobden area of Western Victoria, Australia.

 

Damian was ten years old when he attended a five-day youth camp with around 40 other children in September 1974. It was run by a community called the Young Australia League, and their base camp was established beside the Atherton River in Taggerty.

 

From the camp, participants would catch a bus each day to various wilderness regions to participate in a variety of nature-based activities. The children were always heavily chaperoned and supervised by experienced adults, and while some of the activities were told to be challenging, none of them could be considered harmful.

 

Disappearance:

On September 4, 1974, Damian and the group set out for Steavenson Falls at Marysville. The plan for the day was to hike a 700-meter winding, establish track to the top of the falls, and enjoy the surrounding views. It was a demanding but safe hike and the group was carefully supervised. Participants stayed within eyesight of each other, until Damian walked ahead and around a corner, briefly out of sight of the others. When other members of the group came around the bend, he was nowhere to be seen.

 

Within minutes, camp supervisors undertook a search of the immediate area and couldn't find him.  He didn't respond when his name was called and it seemed like he'd just disappeared into thin air.   When camp leaders notified police, what remains one of the biggest search operations in Australian history was launched. Around 300 searchers became involved, including Victoria Police, Search and Rescue Squad, Federation of Victorian Walking Clubs Search and Rescue Section, St.Johns Ambulance, Civil Defence (now known as the State Emergency Service), Forestry Commission of Victoria, Red Cross, and Local Volunteers. They covered an area of around 19 square kilometers in difficult terrain and difficult weather conditions, including snow at times.  The official search for Damian ended on the 8th of September 1974. Authorities expressed little hope for finding Damian alive.

 

Family, friends, and local volunteers have continued to search for Damian over the years. No evidence of him has ever been found.

 

Damian's brother, Stephen McKenzie, later became a Detective Sargeant, second in charge of a community crime unit. In the four years he worked at Crime Stoppers, none of the 300,000 phone calls that came through were about his little brother. There is an article about this but it's behind a paywall.

Theories:

 

Paulides made claims in his Missing 411 series about Damian Mackenzie's disappearance. One claim was that the dogs used by search and rescue teams could never locate Damian's scent at any point on the trail; they didn't find and lose a scent, they never found one at all. Another claim was that his footprints were found near the top of the waterfall and suddenly just stopped, as though he had "evaporated" on the spot. A officer working on the case denied proof of such footprints, and I can't find anything verifying what Paulides said about the dogs.

 

So now that's out of the way...

 

Edit: animal attack isn't on this list because the only animal that would pose a significant risk in that part of Australia is a snake, maybe a spider. Because the weather was cold and later snow, the chance of a snake being active enough to bite a human was miniscule.

 

Lost/injured and died of hypothermia

 

The main theory is that he got lost and then fell, and/or died of hypothermia.

 

This baffles investigators - and me - for several reasons. If he'd wandered off the track and was lost,  he wouldn't have gotten far enough to not hear his friends and camp supervisors calling his name just minutes later. If he'd fallen unconscious in those few moments, he wouldn't have heard them or maybe wasn't able to respond, however, he would have been so close that the ensuing search would almost certainly have located him. Having said that, the terrain was rough and with thick underbrush, and it isn't unheard of for searchers to walk past a body during an intensive search.

 

2. Fallen and drowned

 

Another theory was that he'd slipped and fallen into the Steavenson river and drowned, however, the relatively shallow and slow-moving river was searched extensively, and detectives were confident he wasn't there.

 

3. Mineshaft

 

There were once many mine shafts from the old gold prospecting times in the area, however, all that was known about had been filled in. Some have theorized that some unknown mines might have been forgotten and left open, and he fell into one. I am inclined to think searchers would have discovered such a mine in their searches for Damian.

 

4. Kidnapping

 

This has been implied, even though there has never been any evidence of anyone suspicious in the region. Never mind the logistical challenge of kidnapping and possibly harming Damian, disposing of his body, and escaping unnoticed while an immediate and vast search is carried out.

 

Edit: lots of people have implied an adult from the camp harming Damian. Given that not one source has mentioned that anyone was ever unaccounted for, with no suspicious footprints, absences, or disturbed regions indicating a struggle, I don't think this to be likely. As you read, this was one of the most intensive searches in Australian history. I have no doubt they interviewed everyone and searched the base camp as well.

 

Also, children themselves saw Damian go around the corner and then alerted the adults when he wasn't there, so it doesn't seem the case that the adults present influenced the children to believe they saw something they didn't see. I know it's easy to go directly to shameful solutions to these mysteries, but they're just isn't a hint of information that this was the case regarding the camp leaders.

 

Conclusion:

 

The most likely scenario is that Damian got lost or hurt and died of hypothermia and, by unfortunate chance, he wasn't spotted by searchers.

 

Both of his parents, Peter and Marcia, died without knowing what occurred to their son. May they all rest in peace together, and may some closure come for his remaining siblings and family.

 

Thanks for reading