It was bad luck that my sister, Rebecca Bundy, disappeared in the week before Christmas in 1984. Most people were distracted with last-minute shopping and catering plans for family visits. Others were probably preoccupied with getting as far away from the good cheer as possible.

Then, two days after Rebecca went missing, Jacob Healy, a local sheep farmer, shot and killed his pregnant wife and their three lovely blonde-haired kids. When he’d satisfied himself they were all dead, he drove his ute to the dam, walked into the centre of it and turned the gun on himself. A murder-suicide investigation followed.

Perhaps because of the time of year it became one of those stories that made world headlines. Family photos covered the front pages of all the newspapers, and it was the lead story on radio and TV news. It seemed to go on for weeks, even after the funerals. White coins buried in the Maryhill cemetery.

The Healy investigation took its toll on the local police resources, and perhaps their empathy was stretched thin too. It meant that Rebecca’s disappearance quickly became a cold case. Those two events – Christmas and the Healys’ murder-suicide – worked against my family and had devastating long-term consequences.

The other point I’ll make about the lack of police interest in Rebecca’s disappearance was that she’d run away once before, and came home when she’d cooled down. It’s true she’d been talking about going to Queensland over the school holidays. That possibility was always a live option. But as the days and weeks went on other leads emerged that added to the confusion and uncertainty.

Anyway, Rebecca slamming the back door behind her always followed an argument with our mother.

I was fourteen years old when Rebecca vanished. I was young, and a lot of what was going on around me didn’t make sense until

I was older, particularly relating to my mother’s mercurial and increasingly alarming behaviour.

But I was there on the day Rebecca disappeared. I watched her hurry away. If I close my eyes I can still see her, the way her hair seemed to float behind her as she fled behind the toilet block at the showgrounds.

That was thirty-eight years ago.

I’m now ready to share my story from the beginning about what I knew and what I’ve found out since…

Continue reading the extract here…

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