Carolina Wilga search triggers uncomfortable questions for families of missing Indigenous men

Australia Broadcast Center

5 days ago

The discovery of missing German backpacker Carolina Wilga, who survived 11 nights alone in the West Australian outback, was met with joy and relief across the country.
Ms Wilga was found walking down an unsealed access road late last week by a local farmer, after an intensive police search and several days of widespread media coverage.
From her hospital bed, Ms Wilga thanked authorities and the community who rallied together to find her, adding that she had only survived "thanks to this incredible outpouring of support".
But this remarkable story of survival has also triggered an uncomfortable question among families of others who have gone missing in remote WA: do we care more about some missing people than others?
In recent years, half a dozen young Aboriginal men have vanished in the north of the state in mysterious circumstances, in cases that have triggered a fraction of the public interest.
And their families, still searching for answers, feel that a lack of attention on the cases of these missing men has made it harder to find them.
Within the past three years, at least five young Aboriginal men have disappeared in regional WA, in a variety of circumstances.
In October 2022, Clinton Lockyer and Wesley Lockyer disappeared just a week apart in the Pilbara region, after socialising with friends and relatives in the hours prior.
Less than a month later, Wylie Oscar's vehicle was found on a remote bush track near Fitzroy Crossing, stocked with food and water.
Zane Stevens was last seen near his bogged car on the coast near Broome in April 2024.
And Brenton Shar vanished after a night-time walk in the coastal city of Geraldton in May 2024.
The WA government has offered a $500,000 reward to help solve these long-term missing persons cases.
But there have so far been no confirmed sightings of any of the men, nor remains found.
Their families have been left in a type of torturous limbo that psychologists refer to as "ambiguous loss".
And they feel strongly there has been less police and public attention because these missing men are Aboriginal.
"It sounds cruel to say, but when an Aboriginal male goes missing, most of the public don't care," says private investigator Robyn Cottman, who is representing the families of the missing men.
Clinton Lockyer's aunty, Annalee Lockyer, says the perceived indifference adds to their grief.
"Of course we're all glad the backpacker is alive, but it did hurt to see all the coverage," she says.
"You think, does anyone care about our boys the same way? It's not nice to feel like their lives don't even matter — it really hurts."
The reasons that some missing persons cases trigger urgent searches while others fly under the radar are complex, but Ms Cottman believes racism is a factor.
"I think there's racial profiling going on — it's easy to dismiss Indigenous males as 'gone walkabout' or 'gone bush', so there's no urgency trying to locate them," she says.
"Then you've got a female German backpacker who's alone in the bush, all of a sudden it's critical that she's found as quickly as possible.
"There just seem to be two different standards here."
WA Police has rejected the suggestion that racism or neglect have affected the searches for the five missing Aboriginal men.
"Missing persons, regardless of where they are reported missing, are treated as a priority for the WA Police Force," it told the ABC in a statement.
"All investigations into missing persons are conducted using the same underpinning processes and procedures. Each report of a missing person is assessed and resourced appropriately based on a wide range of factors including the specific circumstances of each case and information known to officers at the time.
"Not knowing what happened to a loved one is confronting and challenging for the families and friends of missing persons, and WA Police remains committed to finding answers for those families and communities."
Ms Wilga's case prompted widespread media attention, with hundreds of online news articles published on her disappearance over the course of a couple of weeks.
It is difficult to compare coverage of these missing persons cases, especially considering Ms Wilga's miraculous survival and the international interest given she was a German tourist visiting Australia.
But while the families of Aboriginal men missing in WA have made public appeals for information about their loved ones, there have been significantly fewer headlines about these men in the years since they were last seen.
Private investigator Robyn Cottman says she can understand why Ms Wilga's case attracted escalating attention.
"It creates a more sensational story when it's an international person who is a female alone in the bush," she reflects.
Ms Cottman also notes the public seems to engage less when there is a suspicion of drug use or criminality in the missing person's life, even if that suspicion is untrue or unrelated to their disappearance.
Media coverage of Indigenous missing persons can also be complicated by cultural factors — in some cases, families request that the name and image of their loved one not be published.
Ms Wilga is not the first foreign tourist to trigger a large-scale outback search and a media storm.
WA Premier Roger Cook compared her disappearance to that of American man Robert Bogucki in 1999, who was found alive after six weeks in the Great Sandy Desert.
The search for Mr Bogucki attracted worldwide media attention and cost Australian authorities up to $10,000 a day — and that was before his family spent $80,000 flying a specialist American unit to head into the vast desert to try to retrieve his body.
But not every family has those resources, and not every missing person has a straightforward storyline.
Retired Aboriginal police officer Lindsay Greatorex, who helped search for Mr Bogucki in 1999, says the local men who have gone missing deserve the same level of care and attention.
"Are they getting lost, or has there been foul play? It remains a mystery with a lot of these disappearances because remains haven't been found," he told the ABC's Expanse: Nowhere Man podcast.
One thing these cases do have in common is the legacy of hurt and confusion for those left behind.
Each year around 35,000 people are reported missing in Australia, but only a fraction of those cases trigger a physical search.
According to search and rescue expert Jim Whitehead, an average of around 10 searches begin every day around the country, with around 97 per cent of people found alive.
In each case, a form called a Search Urgency Assessment is completed to determine the response required. It captures risk factors such as the person's age, mental state, access to equipment, and the weather and terrain they are facing.
"Often you do have families that are upset and angry because they feel like not enough is being done to find their loved one," Dr Whitehead says.
He says one of the biggest challenges for search-and-rescue operations is when the person's last known location is unclear, because it means they could be thousands of kilometres away, requiring an unrealistic search radius.
"And if it's unclear if they've entered a vehicle … well, that means they might have travelled to a different part of the country," Dr Whitehead adds.
Another factor that can make searches more challenging is when there's a delay in the person being reported missing, "perhaps because they have an itinerant lifestyle", Dr Whitehead says.
Again, it is difficult to make direct comparisons between cases because of the lack of clarity around the timeline of initial reporting and behind-the-scenes steps taken by police.
In the case of Carolina Wilga, it's not clear exactly when her friends first raised concerns with police.
The first police press release came seven days after her last contact with friends in Fremantle, suggesting she was reported missing within a few days of dropping out of contact.
In the cases of the Aboriginal men from northern Australia, it took between five and 10 days for the initial missing persons reports to be made.
However, some family members claim they did make approaches to police earlier, but that these were not taken seriously by local officers.
Dr Whitehead, who does not have specific knowledge of the West Australian cases, says delays in reporting a missing person are generally not due to a lack of care or concern.
Often this can be linked to a deeply rooted distrust of police, or a reflection of the more transient lifestyle many locals live, or limited access to telecommunications in many remote areas.
Dr Whitehead says another complicating factor is that Aboriginal people are more likely to go missing in remote parts of the country, where there are minimal police resources to undertake large-scale searches.
"Sometimes people feel we should be doing more as police, and in some cases that's absolutely true," he says.
"But … search and rescue takes up a small amount of police time compared with everything else they have to do, so it doesn't have a huge amount of resources."
Recent research does point to an over-representation of Indigenous people among missing persons in Australia.
Exclusive data provided to the ABC in 2019 showed Aboriginal people accounted for 17.5 per cent of unsolved missing persons cases in Western Australia, despite making up just 3 per cent of the state's population.
Six years on, national figures on the rates of Indigenous missing persons cases remain patchy, with a recent Senate inquiry into missing and murdered First Nations women and children recommending an urgent review to address this data gap by the end of 2025.
That inquiry received dozens of submissions, including one from Darumbal and South Sea Islander academic Amy McQuire, Sisters Inside and the Institute for Collaborative Race Research, which summarised "Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are more likely to go missing, and less likely to be found".
The final Senate inquiry report, published in August 2024, noted that systemic racism and discrimination, as well as disparities in media reporting, had historically hampered investigations into the whereabouts of First Nations people.
As Indigenous missing persons advocate Martin Hodgson has pointed out, a legacy of distrust remains, despite improvements in practices and attitudes.
"The reality is, there are people who've gone missing from remote parts of Australia and they've never even been reported to police, because of the deep distrust that remains," he told the ABC earlier this year.
Dr Whitehead, who oversaw search-and-rescue operations for Queensland police for almost 20 years, acknowledges the issue. But he believes the situation has improved.
"There's still a long way to go, but the increase in training on cultural sensitivity and the use of liaison officers has gone a long way," he says.
"So I'm confident that most of the time, the search-and-rescue response is the same, no matter who you are."
For Annalee Lockyer, and the families of the other Aboriginal men who are missing in Western Australia, there is still hope that the public can help find a resolution.
"We've been trying to conduct our own searches for Clinton, but we don't have the resources," she says.
"All of the support and interest to find the backpacker … I feel like our boys deserve that too."