The 27-year-old Victorian has been missing since December, which frankly strikes me as an extreme measure to avoid the return flight to Melbourne.
Every time I open the paper these days, there is another frantic update about Samuel Whitsed. The 27-year-old Victorian, we are told in breathless tones, has been missing on Western Australia’s Bibbulmun Track for three months. Police are scouring dense bushland. The public is urged to come forward. And while I am sure this is all very stressful for his immediate family, I cannot help but feel a certain mounting fatigue with the whole theatrical production.
I say this with the authority of someone who has actually conquered the Bibbulmun Track. In the spring of 2019, I flew out to Perth, checked into the Ritz-Carlton at Elizabeth Quay, and took a private black car to the trail’s northern terminus in Kalamunda. For nearly four gruelling hours, my guide and I braved the elements, walking a staggering six kilometres before our catered luncheon arrived. At no point during this expedition did I inexplicably vanish into the wilderness for a fiscal quarter. I simply stayed on the path. It is a very simple concept that appears completely lost on today’s generation of recreational walkers.
Before embarking on my own Bibbulmun journey, I spent weeks in rigorous preparation. I consulted with my personal tailor to ensure my moisture-wicking linens were both breathable and appropriately fitted for the Western Australian climate. I secured a satellite phone, primarily to ensure my broker could reach me before the Tokyo market closed. And, crucially, I informed my driver exactly where to collect me at the end of the afternoon. It appears Mr. Whitsed skipped these rudimentary precautions entirely, opting instead to simply wander into the bushland with what I can only assume was a half-empty water bottle and a head full of romanticized nonsense about the great outdoors.
When I mentioned this lack of foresight to several mining executives at a charity gala last Tuesday, they could only shake their heads in quiet agreement. We were standing by the ice sculpture, discussing the rising costs of aviation fuel, when the topic of the search helicopters inevitably arose. Every hour those choppers spend hovering over the dense canopy looking for one misplaced Victorian is an hour they aren't transporting vital corporate stakeholders to their remote dig sites. It is, quite frankly, an egregious misallocation of state resources.
It is incredibly selfish to demand this level of municipal attention just because you forgot how to walk in a straight line back to a major metropolitan center.
Let us look at the facts. Whitsed travelled all the way from Victoria, a state globally renowned for its artisanal coffee and pathological inability to handle rugged terrain. He set off near the outskirts of Perth. This is not the Amazon basin. You are never more than a brisk two-day hike from a perfectly acceptable flat white or a mining magnate's private airstrip. To remain unfound in this environment requires a level of stubbornness that I find insulting to the taxpayers funding the helicopters.
Some bleeding hearts have suggested that the dense bushland is treacherous. I find this hard to reconcile with my own memories of the track, which mostly consist of admiring some lovely eucalyptus trees while my sherpa adjusted the strap on my Yeti cooler. If the environment was so hostile, why did I manage to return to civilization in ample time for a 4:00 PM hot stone massage?
The reality we are all tiptoeing around is that this disappearance is symptomatic of a broader societal decay. We have coddled our hikers. We have told them that if they wander off the designated trail to find themselves, the state will spend millions of dollars helping them do it. We need to return to a baseline of personal accountability. If you cannot manage a simple stroll through the Bibbulmun without requiring a multi-agency manhunt, perhaps you should stick to walking laps around the Melbourne Cricket Ground.