The devastated mother of missing teenager Pheobe Bishop has urged locals to ‘keep their porch lights on’ as forensics arrive at the search for the 17-year-old.
Pheobe was last seen leaving a home in Gin Gin, Bundaberg, where she had been living with couple Tanika Bromley and James Wood, on May 15.
Detectives believe the pair drove the teenager 40 minutes to Bundaberg Airport where she was supposed to board an 8.30am flight to Brisbane and then onto Perth where she planned to meet up her boyfriend.
Queensland Police this week declared two crime scenes; the Gin Gin property where Pheobe has been staying and Ms Bromley’s 2011 silver Hyundai ix35 hatchback.
Questions remain over exactly why Pheobe was living there, but final posts she made to social media before she disappeared suggested the troubled teen had fallen out with her mother, Kylie Johnson, and would not return home.
Ms Johnson addressed her daughter directly in a post on Facebook on Saturday, which also featured a child’s drawing of a rainbow and the words ‘thinking of you’.
‘Phee Phee we wont stop looking for you till your home. I urge everyone in Gin Gin to keep their porch lights on tonight and guide our girl home…’ she wrote.
The distraught mum said ‘someone somewhere has to know something’.
‘Another day and minimal answers. I’m absolutely begging anyone with any information to contact the Queensland Police Service,’ she continued.
‘It could be the smallest of details you might even think it’s irrelevant information but it could be the key to bringing Pheobe home.
‘Thank you to our Family, friends and community! Your thoughts love, respect and kindness are appreciated more then you could know or imagine.’
It comes as the search for Pheobe resumed on Saturday morning as over 40 SES volunteers entered thick bushland in the Good Night Scrub National Park.
SES volunteers from Bundaberg, Elliot Heads, Moore Park, Gin Gin, Gladstone, Calliope, Mount Perry, Bargara and Tiaro are assisting in the search which has moved to the wider area in and around Gin Gin, and rural areas west of the suburb.
A drone expert from Queensland Fire and Rescue is being deployed above the area to assist in the search for the missing teen and will focus on the river.
Among the volunteers is Gin Gin resident Midge, who has worked with the SES since 2011. She could be heard calling instructions through the trees to her team.
‘It’s going to be hard going today. It’s just going to be thick scrub. We don’t know what we’re looking for, just anything out of place,’ she told Daily Mail .
An update from police on Friday said they would continue to search the wider Gin Gin and Bundaberg areas, and ‘no one is in custody in relation to this investigation’.
‘Police are appealing to the public for information, including any movement in the Good Night Scrub area on May 15, particularly in the Mingo Road and Gayndah Road areas,’ the update read.
Daily Mail earlier this week revealed Mr Woods is divorced and only moved to Gin Gin from Emerald, 500km west in Queensland’s Central Highlands, around six months ago after the end of his marriage.
Ms Bromley is understood to be a Gin Gin local and a mother of two. The couple are believed to have moved in together earlier this year.
The pair were questioned by police but later released.
No charges have been laid over Pheobe’s disappearance and Daily Mail does not suggest Mr Wood and Ms Bromley were involved.