Jack disappeared while hanging out at a fishing spot… his mother has made a desperate plea as she fears he may have met a grim end

Almost 100 volunteers are spearheading a renewed search for a young man who vanished without a trace almost one year ago. 

Jack McLennan, 27, was last seen in Ficks Crossing area near Murgon, three hours north of Brisbane, on October 4, last year. 

Mr McLennan had been spending time with a friend at the fishing spot but reportedly walked off at about 10pm.  

His family reported him missing the following day, with police launching an extensive land and air search for the South Burnett man. 

The search, which lasted weeks, failed to locate Mr McLennan but found his hat, shoes, wallet and bank card.

His disappearance sparked a deluge of speculation on local Facebook groups, with even his mum, Kellie Moody, speculating her son may have been met with foul play.

Now, ten months after Jack’s disappearance, his devastated mother pleaded with social media users to get offline and go and look for her son.

Her plea has not gone unanswered. 

About 70 people have volunteered in the latest coordinated ground search, while others have created flyers and merchandise to spearhead the effort. 

The search will be held on September 6 –  a day before his 28th birthday and one month prior to the one-year anniversary of his disappearance – and will begin in Ficks Crossing.  

Miranda Wells, who runs the Sunshine Coast Missing Persons Facebook page, has been involved with the search for Mr McLennan since ‘the moment he went missing’. 

Ms Wells said she felt compelled to share his story as she has actively highlighted cases of missing men, women and children from across the state since 2022. 

‘We actually expected him to be found. We didn’t think that this would be happening,’ she told the Courier Mail.

The missing persons advocate, and keen outdoor explorer will be one of the people volunteering in the renewed search. 

Ms Wells also has first-hand experience in conducting ground searches in rough terrain, with the renewed search focusing on areas which have yet to be covered.

‘I kept bugging (Kellie) and saying you really need to rule out every single area because sometimes you can do two, three searches and still miss things,’ Ms Wells said.

Most volunteers will be on foot, while some will navigate the terrain on horseback, with Ms Wells adding:  ‘We really want to see him found’. 

Ms Moody explained she had been begging for a winter search from Queensland Police, and wanted the Ficks Crossing area, where Jack was reportedly last seen, to be combed again.

In the days after Jack went missing, specialist divers searched in and around Ficks Crossing, a fishing and swimming hole, along with ground and aerial search teams.

Ms Moody has cast the net wide for help, including enquiring whether Indigenous trackers from the Cherbourg Aboriginal Shire Council, ‘who know the area best’, could assist. 

‘I think we owe it to him to get out there and physically search because we can speculate for many more months on the computer, but we really need to get our boots on the ground,’ Ms Moody wrote on Facebook. 

‘There has been no formal searching done since last year… let’s hope we get another SES search, however I never get my hopes up.’ 

Ms Moody thanked Sunshine Coast Missing Persons for organising the upcoming search party, acknowledging it would be ‘in hard territory and not for everyone’.

‘I’ve wanted a couple of huge searches for a long time and I feel this month will be great to get out,’ she said on Sunday. 

‘If we can get huge numbers, we can cover a lot of ground. We can all meet and if anyone wants to see where Jack’s items were found, we can show you and you might get a better idea of what has been going on.’

On October 10, police released CCTV showing Mr McLennan at a bottleshop on Lamb Street in Murgon at 1.30pm on October 4 – just hours before he went missing. 

The 27-year-old then got into a car with a friend who he spent a few hours with at Ficks Crossing before he vanished. 

Detectives also found a pair of white sneakers near Ficks Crossing thought to belong to Mr McLennan on October 10. 

The shoes were discovered about 300metres from the Bunya Highway, a major road that runs through the region. 

Officers found what they think to be Mr McLennan’s hat near McAlister and McLucas Streets in Murgon on October 11. 

The official search was scaled back on the weekend of October 19 and 20 but was revived briefly in November after Mr McLennan’s wallet and bank card were found on a private property. 

The items were found on November 17 on a property closely adjacent to the search area on Ferris Road between Ficks Crossing and Murgon. 

Ms Moody wants the case moved higher than the local police, and an increase in the reward for information leading to Jack’s discovery.

She has claimed her son met with ‘unsavoury people’ the night he disappeared, but is holding out hope he is still alive.

Friends of the family have claimed police aren’t doing enough to find Jack.

However, Queensland Police defended their search efforts, saying that along with Ficks Crossing in October, the Kinbombi Falls area was searched in February when ‘visibility was good, Jack was not located and nothing of interest was discovered’. 

In April, a sinister theory emerged that his body was dumped at a nearby beauty spot, Kinbombi Falls, 28km east of Murgon.

A friend said a woman had already handed over a recording of her son to police, describing what happened the night when Jack was last seen outside Murgon, 260km northwest of Brisbane.

The recording is believed to state that Jack and three men went to Ficks Crossing, where he mysteriously died. His remains were then apparently taken to Kinbombi Falls.

The Coroner’s Court of Queensland is investigating the disappearance.