Volunteers unite to help strangers and find Nannup Four

Army of volunteers become unlikely friends as they search for Nannup Four Armed with shovels, rakes and chainsaws, a team of citizen searchers are scouring a stretch of unforgiving bushland in southern Western Australia with one objective: find the remains of four people they've never met. The task at hand? Unearthing any trace of a mum and her young daughter, along with her conspiracy-obsessed boyfriend and their housemate, who haven't been seen in almost 20 years. Teili Rafferty is one of the searchers hoping to find any sign of them. Travelling nearly 200 kilometres from her home in Bunbury, south of Perth, it's the longest the mental health nurse has been away from her two young daughters. "They didn't want me to leave," she said. "I just said to them, 'If you were lost in the bush and you've been there for a really long time, you would want someone to come and try and help find you.'" Ms Rafferty joins a team of geologists, former detectives, prospectors and family members trying to answer a question which has baffled the region and the rest of the world for nearly two decades. Who are the Nannup Four? Chantelle McDougall, her daughter Leela, Simon Kadwill and Tony Popic vanished from the outskirts of the small West Australian town in 2007. After their disappearance, the group left a letter pinned to the door of the farmhouse they were renting, saying they'd moved to Brazil. They'd sold their cars, their pet dogs and given away most of their possessions. But when Ms McDougall's family failed to hear from her, they raised the alarm. In the following weeks, it was discovered the group hadn't travelled on their passports. Their bank accounts were untouched. A 2017 coronial inquest couldn't determine if the four were alive or dead. Ms Rafferty was a teenager at the time, but she has followed the case for a long time. "Often, if I'm going past Nannup, it all still pops into my mind, and you just wonder," she said. "You just think the family's living with that, and they still don't know what's happened." The citizen searchers descended on the town of Northcliffe, 100km south of Nannup, nine days ago to search an area of bushland identified as a place of interest in the case. In the days before the disappearance, either Mr Popic or Mr Kadwill purchased two bus tickets to Northcliffe. In the months after, prisoners carrying out track clearing near Northcliffe discovered items of women's clothing and reported a smell of death in the area. WA police did search the area but later admitted they were in the wrong location. Who is searching now? Leading the team is Matt Strickland, vice-president of Tasmanian missing persons search group Find Our Lost Loved Ones. Each morning he gathers the group around a campfire at the local holiday park for a morning briefing. Cups of tea in hand, they look over large maps and discuss the day's plan. Twenty-four-year-old hospitality worker Ethan Watsham and his older brother Jordan have been here since day one. He heard about the call-out for volunteers after the case was the subject of an ABC podcast Expanse: the Nannup Four, and wanted to help. The two brothers spend a lot of time in WA's bush, but they've never been part of a missing persons search. "[The] Closest thing to this kind of stuff would have been emu bobbing in cadets because someone's lost a radio," Mr Watsham said. They've been battling rain and humidity to clear overgrown tracks, making way for a team of cadaver dogs to comb the area for human remains. "We were told it was going to be tough and that the terrain was unforgiving," he said. "But I think it's surprised everyone who's come out here just how unforgiving it can be." But the volunteers continue with a dogged determination to get answers for two other members of the search: Jim and Cath McDougall. The parents and grandparents of Chantelle and Leela McDougall. They've driven from their home in regional Victoria to be here. "All these years there hasn't sort of been much happening, and for all these people to turn out here and help is just absolutely amazing," Mrs McDougall said. The McDougalls have been working alongside the volunteers each day, sifting through the forest undergrowth looking for any signs of their daughter and granddaughter. "It is very emotional and sometimes very distressing, but I'm glad I'm out there helping,"Mrs McDougall said. The stretch of bushland the team is working in was once a walking track, but bushfires tore through the area in 2015, burning everything in the vicinity to a crisp. What have they found? Only two scraps of fabric have been found so far. But it's unlikely they are related to the four missing people. Amid the reality of what this group have come here to find and the disappointing lack of results so far, there are moments of levity. Evenings spent swapping stories around the campfire, a guitar strumming in the background. A spirited chorus of Happy Birthday sung to Mr Watsham, who turned 24 during the search. In the face of tragedy and unanswered questions, the unlikely group of strangers have forged an unexpected camaraderie. "There's a togetherness that I wasn't expecting," Mr Watsham said. He and his brother were due to return home to Perth before the search ended, but they've changed their minds. "To leave early just seemed like the wrong thing to do, so we're staying," Mr Watsham said. They know they may not get the answers they came for, but they want to know they did everything they could to help Jim and Cath McDougall: two strangers who have become their friends. "If we weren't to get a result, then I think that we've done everything we can to prove to them that we gave it the best shot we could with the tools that we have and the people that we have," Mr Watsham said.