by Janine Hill

“HOLD ON,” Edan Huntington told the 000 operator before his phone cut out. 

The 28-year-old has not been heard from since that call, about 4.15am on Wednesday, 18 January.

Nine months later, his mother, Delia Harpur, is determined to keep her son’s case in the public eye hoping that someone might come forward with something that could lead to his whereabouts.

Edan, 28, of the Gold Coast, had been on a 10-day break with his father at an Air b’n’b at Boongala Avenue, Montville, when he went missing.

“He rang and spoke to me for some time when they were on their way up there, and then I rang him the Saturday before he went missing,” Delia said.

“He seemed distressed when I spoke to him and said he was going to ring me back but he didn’t. I figured he would ring me sometime.

“Time went by and I hadn’t heard from him and I tried ringing him on the Wednesday morning but his phone was off. It was strange. He didn’t usually have the phone off.”

Edan’s father had been woken early that morning by ambulance officers looking for Edan, who had called them earlier during their stay when he felt unwell.

Delia said Edan had been on the phone the night before to his ex-girlfriend but had not been in contact with anyone he knew on the Sunshine Coast while staying in the area.

Edan was driving a grey 2013 Ford Territory, NSW registration CQG 59F, which has not been located.

A passer-by recalled seeing Edan parked on Montville’s main street, north of the Altitude on Montville building, early on the same morning he made the 000 calls.

The witness said a woman with long dark hair tied back, and possibly aged in her late 30s or early 40s, was  walking along the roadside a short distance away.

“He saw her walking away from the car about 100m away and thought they might have been together. There’s not a lot of people who are around at that hour of the morning,” Delia said.

The woman, who was wearing a white shirt and purple shorts and carrying a black bag, has not come forward.

Delia has listened to Edan’s 000 phone conversations – after calling 000, he asked the 000 operator to call him back while he checked his location - but gleaned few clues as to her son’s movements.

“He’s hard to understand on the phone at the best of times but he was talking fast. All I could hear him say was, ‘I might need you to call back because I need to use my phone to check maps because I don’t know where to go’.

“There was a lot of background noise. There was some coming from 000. There was some noise that was different. 

“Ethan definitely wasn’t driving. It’s not clear where he was calling from.

“My opinion was he wasn’t ringing them for himself, he was ringing them for someone else. It sounded as if he was in a situation.”

Police have forwarded a report on Edan’s disappearance to the coroner. 

Searches have found no trace of Edan or his vehicle but the Sunshine Coast Missing Persons Facebook page administrator has been in contact with Delia about further searches.

Delia, who lives in northern NSW with Edan’s stepfather, has turned to GoFundMe to try and fund trips to the Sunshine Coast to look for her son. 

“We have to keep looking. We just feel that we can’t stop until we find out if something has happened to him,” she said.

“It’s been awful. I cry every day. It’s a totally different existence. 

“I’m lucky I’ve got a really supportive partner. He says I need to keep it together for Edan. That really stuck in my head.

“I’m just trying to be realistic and not go too far down certain lines of thinking.”

Edan is described as Caucasian, about 175 centimetres tall with brown hair, green eyes, and a tattoo of an oriental dragon on his right arm.

• Anyone with any information should call Policelink on 131 444, Nambour police on 5459 0200, or Crimestoppers on 1800 333 000 quoting reference number QP2300130691.