The active ground search for Mark Sear, who has been missing in Western Australia’s far north for more than two weeks, has been called off.<\/p>\n
The 62-year-old was last seen on September 19, driving away from Moola Bulla Station, 80 kilometres north of Hall Creek, in a white tray-top truck.<\/p>\n
His vehicle was found bogged and abandoned off the Great Northern Highway six days later.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Mark Sear is described as a “bushie” but a friend says his disappearance is out of character. (Supplied: WA Police\u00a0)<\/p>\n
Sonia Cooper is a close friend of Mr Sear and has known him for two decades.<\/p>\n
While she described him as a “bushie”, she said it was out of character for Mr Sear to go missing for this long.<\/p>\n
“I am worried and I hope he turns up soon,” Ms Cooper said.<\/p>\n
Premier thanks searchers<\/p>\n
WA Premier Roger Cook thanked those involved in the search for Mr Sear.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
WA Premier Roger Cook praised authorities and volunteers for their efforts.\u00a0 (ABC News: Courtney Withers)<\/p>\n
“I want to sincerely thank every one of the WA Police officers and SES volunteers who dedicated their time and energy to the search for Mr Sear,” Mr Cook said.<\/p>\n
“All our thoughts are with his family during this difficult time.”<\/p>\n
WA Police said significant air and land resources were committed to the search, but the outback’s difficult conditions made it challenging.<\/p>\n
Temperatures peaked in the mid to high 30s over the past two weeks, while the search was underway in the Kimberley’s outback.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Tactical Response Group trackers travelled from Perth to help search for Mr Sear. (ABC Kimberley: Andrew Seabourne\u00a0)<\/p>\n
More than 600 square kilometres were scaled in harsh, hot conditions by local police and rangers, as well as Perth’s Tactical Response Group and State Emergency Service volunteers.<\/p>\n
The matter was being treated as a missing person case with no information suggesting anything suspicious had occurred.<\/p>\n
Police are still urging anyone with information about Mr Sear to contact them immediately.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The active ground search for Mark Sear, who has been missing in Western Australia’s far north for more…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189394,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,120213,120210,120212,120209,117049,37631,120211,44,7452,25962],"class_list":["post-189393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-called-off","tag-great-northern-highway","tag-hall-creek","tag-kimberely","tag-mark-sear","tag-missing-man","tag-moola-bulla-station","tag-news","tag-search","tag-wa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189393\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}