Jim Smith found this story in “A Reason to Live”(2005, Elvis Press, Adelaide) by Janet Crease. In June 1996, a Sydney woman went missing and her car was found at Wentworth Falls Reserve, near the end of Falls Road. Police Rescue, SES, and RFS volunteers searched for her for a number of days without success.
Janet Crease lived nearby with her two dogs, Molly and Lesal. She had trained them to search for people and offered to help. She met the police at 8am and got them to unlock the car so the dogs could get in and “get a good deep whiff” pf some of the missing lady’s personal items. She then told the dogs to “go seek”. “Lesal took of like a rocket down an old track that was no longer used by tourists. Molly held back. After a few minutes of sniffing around, Lesal returned to the car and sort of asked permission before she headed off toward a [popular] track… By now, Molly was on the scent as well, and they both flew down the hundreds of steps leading away from the car park, hesitating now and then to sniff in ditches and at foliage just to make sure they were on the right track…”
The dogs rushed to the cliff tops and Janet had to put a lead on Lesal as the dog was attempting to go over the edge. “She kept indicating down to the valley floor in one direction, across to the right of the falls, which was about 1 km away…’she’s down there, or over there’ she kept saying to me…
“We checked out this point and that point all along slippery and narrow tracks right on the edge of the cliff tops. It was freezing. Ice had formed in puddles and freezing water was dripping off ferns and foliage hanging down form the banks of the cliff tops above us. Every now and then, Lesal would turn and point in the same direction as she had been earlier, but by now we were in quite a different area. Still, she pointed, ‘over there, over there!'”
Janet told the police what the dog had told her and it was decided to abseil down from where the dog had indicated. Janet thought this was a waste of time as the dog was indicating further away but found it interesting watching the police setup the abseil and go over the edge.
At 10 O’clock the temperature had risen to seven degrees and the media had arrived (but Jim Smith was unable to find any stories in the media about this event). The Police took turns abseiling up and down the cliff, but found nothing. They decided to call in the Polair helicopter, which arrived about an hour later, after refuelling. From the top of the cliffs the crew and pilot could be seen peering along the cliffs and down into the valley for about half an hour but didn’t look further away, where Janet thought the dog was actually indicating. She wasn’t surprised that nothing was found as they weren’t looking in the best place and vegetation and foliage hid everything. She didn’t say anything and went home.
A week later, a bushwalker found the woman’s body, caught in a tree. It was right below the cliffs opposite to where she had been and where Lesal had been indicating.