Investigator believes phone data holds answers for missing Belgian

Celine Cremer is not the first person to vanish without a trace in the thick Tarkine rainforest on Tasmania’s west coast.

The 31-year-old Belgian tourist disappeared at Philosopher Falls two years ago, a walk named after the prospector and mining investor James “Philosopher” Smith, who was said to have changed the entire fate of Tasmania by discovering tin at Mount Bischoff.

The walk is a short trek outside the town of Waratah, and is known for its enchanting forest, brightly coloured fungi and a glimpse into the region’s mining past.

Signage on the track explains that it follows a water race that carried water from the Arthur River to the now ghost mining town of Magnet to provide hydropower.

A century later, private investigator Ken Gamble is scrambling through the forest, but he is not looking for minerals.

“I’ve been to a lot of very rough areas and I spent three years in the Army Reserve and I’ve never seen anything like this,” Mr Gamble said.

“This was something else. Once you get into the area where she disappeared, it is really something I’ve never seen before, and it’s dangerous.

Another sign down near the falls, just readable under years of forest grime, shares the history of the conditions early prospectors faced.

This quote on the sign has seemingly become prophetic.

The woody interlacing branches, even when not an inch in diameter, will bear the weight of a man laden with his knapsack.

But woe betide the luckless wight who, while travelling through this scrub, treads on the treacherous mossy disguised twig or branch which has decayed.

Should this not infrequent case happen, down to unknown depths he may drop, while the green treacherous mossy carpet springs into its place like a trap, concealing the engulfed explorer.

It is to be feared that one or two of our missing mining prospectors have met their fate this way…

— RM Johnson, Systemic account of geology of Tasmania, 1888

Private investigator on the case

Ms Cremer was reported missing on June 26, 2023, when she did not get on the Spirit of Tasmania as planned.

Her car was found in the car park of the Philosopher Falls walking track the next day, but was believed to have been there since June 17.

Search and rescue teams conducted an extensive search of the area, using swiftwater rescue experts and a cadaver dog, but efforts were formally suspended on July 10, with winter conditions not considered survivable.

Mr Gamble became involved in the case when Ms Cremer’s friend Justine Ropet reached out to him.

Her friends and family were frustrated that authorities could find no trace of her, and they wanted answers.

Mr Gamble had worked on the disappearance of another Belgian in Australia, Theo Hayez.

His specialty is complex cybercrime and large-scale online fraud, but he gets involved in select missing person cases when he believes police could have missed something.

With permission from Ms Cremer’s mother, Ariane, he obtained her phone data and began a pro bono investigation.

Tracing her steps

Mr Gamble said he discovered additional settings within the raw data inside her Google account.

“That actually provided me with very detailed GPS points, and I was able to map that out, and that gave me her last 40-plus GPS points up until 4:18pm on the day she disappeared,” he said.

“I put those into a map and a diagram, and I was surprised to learn that particular area was not searched.”

Mr Gamble ended up travelling to the forest in April 2024 to conduct his own search with a team on high ground above the walking track.

“We went to that exact location and started searching from that point onwards. We were there for a couple of days,” he said.

He said the ground where she had gone was “treacherous”.

“It was thick, it had a large canopy of growth over it, and you couldn’t actually walk through the forest — you had to climb under logs and over trees,” he said.

He returned again in May after organising a drone search with the help of drone expert Daniel Wood using LiDAR technology to capture the contours of the ground and to detect anything unusual.

Mr Wood has a background in criminology and his drone work is credited with finding the remains of Corey O’Connell in Western Australia two years after he went missing.

Even the drone struggled to get accurate readings due to how thickly covered the ground was.

But it captured an image of something with an unusual colour.

“The police took that really seriously and sent their own team up to do an additional search,” Mr Gamble said.

The public was also able to help search for Ms Cremer by looking through the images captured by the drone.

But again, nothing was found, and a third ground search by Mr Gamble’s team also got no results.

‘I strongly believe she walked up the hill’

Because Ms Cremer had location services turned on, Mr Gamble said parts of her route could be traced.

“You can see intermittent connections when she leaves the car park, and then it goes off for quite a while because she’s walking in an area that has no coverage,” he said.

“Then right at the end of the trail, across what’s called Seven Mile Creek, she comes back into range again, and you can actually see by the coordinates where she’s walking.

“You can see where she’s turned, and she’s suddenly gone off the trail and gone up into high ground.”

He believed she had her phone’s map on and was trying to follow it back to her car.

Mr Gamble said he believed there was compelling evidence that something went wrong up in that area.

“I strongly believe she is within a 1-kilometre radius of the area where she was last pinged at 4:18pm,” he said.

Friends travel to Australia for search

Friends of Ms Cremer have booked flights to come to Tasmania in December to do their own search.

Ms Cremer’s mother, Ariane, is helping organise the trip, but says she’s been “very confident” with Tasmania Police in the search for her daughter, and she appreciates the support from the Tasmanian community.

Ariane will not be travelling to Tasmania as part of the group, but says she hopes they will be able to find something.

“I really do hope for us and for all the people involved to find a clue.”

In a post on social media translated from French, her friend Elo said they were “no longer hoping for miracles, only answers”.

“It will soon be two years since our childhood friend disappeared, without a trace, in a Tasmanian rainforest. Time passes but silence remains unbearable and its absence leaves a void that nothing fills,” the post said.

Her best friend, Justine Ropet, who has been working with Mr Gamble, also posted about the trip, saying the group of four would be going to the site to explore it themselves.

“[The group will] be guided by Tasmanian Police, involved from the start, supported by experts and supported by volunteers,” she said.

“We sincerely hope to find a trace: an object, a clue, something.”

‘We never close missing person cases’

Tasmania Police Inspector Andrew Hanson said foul play was considered early on in the investigation into Ms Cremer’s disappearance.

“There is no evidence of anything else other than a misadventure,” he told ABC Radio Hobart.

Tasmania Police and Mr Gamble agree that she went off-track.

Inspector Hanson said he acknowledged the pain Ms Cremer’s family was feeling, and that it was a difficult decision to suspend the search.

“We’re still in touch with her family, mostly through her mum Ariane, and we are very keen and very committed to continue what efforts we can.

“It’s quite limited with the terrain and with the work that’s already been done and with the passage of time, but we never close missing person cases.”

Inspector Hanson said visitors to Tasmania did not realise how dense bushland could be, and Philosopher Falls was an example of that.

“We are very committed to continuing to help Ariane find her daughter, and that means assessing any new information or any new technologies that might help in that effort,” he said.