Ken Gamble

So you knew then this area to search, where the police hadn't been searching, you knew this was a place to look.

Yes.

What team did you go about assembling to search that area?

Well, once I had established her last point, GPS point, at 4.18pm on that day, I knew she was at that location, right in that place.

The phone remained on.

It was intermittently hitting the tower.

And I could tell that that phone was still there and it hadn't moved much because the tower strength, it appeared to be giving off fairly consistent geolocation pings from the tower.

But there was no more GPS coordinates.

So she's gone over the hill into an area where there's no GPS.

So I realised at that point, after already doing a couple of other searches, that we had to, the only way to do a proper search is to do a grid search, a 50 metre grid search using mapping technology.

and actually get a team of people in there to stand side by side and do a grid search.

And that's what happened.

And the Tasmanian police were in support of this as well?

Yes, they weren't supportive initially until they realised that this was well coordinated.

And once we had written to them and we had a meeting with them and told them how we intend to do the search, they were satisfied that this was going to be done professionally.

So they said, we're very happy to come and give a briefing to your team.

And they were extremely supportive right from day one.

It was only within the first two hours that we found the phone.

The fact that it was just there by itself, what did that mean?

It was just sitting in the grass.