An 80-year-old cruise passenger has been found dead on a Great Barrier Reef island, a day after she was accidentally abandoned there by the ship’s crew.
The passenger’s daughter Katherine Rees yesterday accused the cruise company, Coral Expeditions, of a “failure of care and common sense” that left her mother, Suzanne Rees, to die alone.
Suzanne Rees, a Sydney resident, was on the second day of a cruise circumnavigating Australia when she disembarked the Coral Adventurer on Saturday last week at Lizard Island. She planned to hike with other passengers to a mountain lookout.
Photo: AP
The ship left the resort island about five hours before reporting her missing late on Saturday, officials said.
“We are shocked and saddened that the Coral Adventurer left Lizard Island after an organized excursion without my mum,” Katherine Rees, who also lives in Sydney, said in a statement. “From the little we have been told, it seems that there was a failure of care and common sense. We understand from the police that it was a very hot day, and Mum felt ill on the hill climb. She was asked to head down, unescorted. Then the ship left, apparently without doing a passenger count. At some stage in that sequence, or shortly after, Mum died, alone.”
The crew of a search helicopter spotted Suzanne Rees’ body the next day about 50m off the hiking trail to the lookout, The Australian newspaper reported.
She appeared to have fallen from a cliff or slope, the newspaper said.
Katherine Rees said she hoped a coroner’s inquiry would “find out what the company should have done that might have saved Mum’s life.”
Police said in a statement a coroner would investigate the “non-suspicious death.”
The coroner’s court also confirmed that the death had been referred for investigation.
Coral Expeditions chief executive officer Mark Fifield said his company was fully cooperating with an official investigation.
He said it would be inappropriate to comment while those investigations were under way.
“We have expressed our heartfelt condolences to the Rees family and remain deeply sorry that this has occurred,” Fifield said in a statement.
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