Volunteers show their worth in major Catlins search and rescue effort

The operations room where the Catlins search and rescue was controlled from, with right, incident manager senior constable Murray Hewitson of Owaka, and volunteers Adrian Dance and Graeme Irvine.

It's heartbreaking for a family to not only have a loved one go missing, but for searchers to not find a body.

The 100-strong search and rescue team, which spent a week combing Catlins bush and waterways for a missing man recently, can take some comfort that at least they did that.

They found the body of Stephen Lowe near McLean Falls, on Wednesday last week. The Dunedin man had by then been missing for more than 10 days.

He left work on Portsmouth Drive, Dunedin, about 10am on Friday September 15, but his car was not found until the following Tuesday, in the Catlins Conservation Park.

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His trail was already four days old by the time an extensive LandSAR search of the surrounding area joined by local volunteers, police, specialist dog units and water rescue teams, began. Members came from Dunedin, Balclutha, Eastern Southland, Central Otago and North Otago.

"You always start out in the hopes that they've hunkered down somewhere."

They knew from Lowe's family that he was not overly fit, would not have been prepared for a night in the bush, and they roughly knew his shoe size for footprints. 

The team worked on the assumption that he would go to the McLean Falls, a well-known Catlins attraction. Members initially split into two teams, with one going to the falls and the other to the Tautuku Bivouac, searching in a 300m radius, which is a standard procedure based on typical behaviour of lost people, and how far they can travel on foot from the last known point.

Lowe was eventually found by one of the volunteer's search dogs, in a hollow behind a fallen tree near the falls, well outside the search radius – not where searchers expected him to be, Hewitson said.

He could not comment on whether or not altering the original search radius would have made any difference to the outcome, but said:

"We were four days behind and although we tried to remain positive, it became clear as the search went on that it would be a recovery unless he was well prepared."

Nevertheless, it was not the outcome the search and rescue team members hoped for, many of whom put in hundreds of hours, some of them in dense, sodden bush and difficult conditions.

"It was an amazing effort. I can't say enough about their tenacity."

He said the exercise had shown the value of volunteers, and urged anyone who was interested in being part of a search and rescue team to get in touch.