KATRINA BRANDON
By KATRINA BRANDON
QUEENSLAND author Nicole Morris is releasing her book Vanished on June 7 to help raise awareness for missing people and the events that happen around these cases that you can look out for. Included in the book is the story of Marcia Ryan, who went missing near Moe and Morwell nearly 30 years ago. The book covers 10 missing person cases that have happened around Australia from 1979 to recent cases. Motivation for the book came from personal interest from Nicole’s position, as well as curiosity over many years of questioning before the position. Nicole is director of the Australian Missing Persons Register which was founded in 2005. She states that “53,000 people go missing in Australia each year. Most of them are teenagers, about 35,000.” “I decided to create a website for the missing persons, so that the public would be able to access information about the missing, and I taught myself how and gathered as many cases as possible from books, newspapers, even scanning photos out of books to add to the website (some of which are still on there today) and I gradually built the Australian Missing Persons Register.” Nicole’s goal is to illustrate how crucial mental health is in Australia and to express how the families involved want to share their experiences with people like them. “All of these families really wanted for me to tell their stories, to help others understand what a family goes through when they have a missing loved one. They also wanted to help other families that are in the same boat.” Nicole said. “It would also be incredible if one of the people in the book walks past a bookshop and sees their own face on the cover.” With the story from 1979, Nicole expressed that she added the story of the missing person so that people know that even older cases are important to them even now, around 44 years later. “In the case of Marcia Ryan, who went missing near Moe and Morwell, her case is such a mystery that I have no idea what to think,” she said. “Nothing makes sense, nothing is logical, there are so many questions.”
