4338.142 · May 22, 2018 AD
The Creek That Kept Its Secrets
On the morning of 22 May 2018, a seasonal orchard worker named Isaac Fairburn failed to return from his usual walk along Bywater Creek, south of Franklin. What began as a missing persons report from a rural property became a three-day search involving Southern Division's Major Crimes Unit and one of the earliest operational deployments of Detective Karl Jenkins and his K9 partner, Jargus. The creek gave up evidence but not answers.
The call reached Huonville station just after eight o'clock on a Tuesday morning. Barry Velt, orchard owner, reporting that one of his seasonal pickers hadn't come back from a walk. The picker — a twenty-four-year-old from Devonport named Isaac Fairburn — had been working the property for three weeks. Quiet lad. Polite. Kept to himself. Walked the creek most mornings before his shift started. Never missed a day's work until today.
The duty officer logged it as a welfare concern. Seasonal workers in the Huon Valley disappeared from time to time — most turned up at a mate's place or a pub in town, having decided the pay wasn't worth the early starts. It happened often enough that nobody treated the first call with particular urgency.
By nightfall, the welfare concern had not resolved itself. Fairburn's prepaid mobile was returning no signal. His belongings remained in the worker's quarters on the Velt property. His car — a rust-spotted Holden Commodore with Devonport registration — sat where he had parked it three days earlier.
The following morning, Detective Karl Jenkins drove south from Hobart with a German Shepherd named Jargus riding in the back seat. It was six months into their partnership, and neither had yet encountered a case that would test what they were becoming together. Bywater Creek would provide that test — though not the resolution either of them wanted.
