In a twist straight out of a true-crime thriller, police have peeled back the curtain on the eerie last known steps of missing FIFO worker William “Bill” Carter, revealing a desperate detour from a routine flight that ended with him vanishing into the salty embrace of Trigg Beach. The 25-year-old mining roughneck, fresh off a soul-searching holiday in Zambia and bound for the dusty red dirt of a Pilbara mine site, ditched his gate at Perth Airport and hailed a cab straight to the crashing Indian Ocean surf – a move that’s left his heartbroken family begging for answers and cops scouring the shoreline for any sign of the man they’ve branded “high-risk.”

It was supposed to be just another swing back to the grind. On Saturday, December 6, Bill shared a casual brunch with his mum, Jenny O’Byrne, at the Dome Café in Kelmscott – a quiet corner of Perth’s southeastern suburbs where the coffee’s strong and the worries are supposed to stay at bay. Jenny, a no-nonsense mum who’s juggled single parenting with her own FIFO stints in the family business, snapped a selfie with her boy around 12:20 p.m. – him grinning in a fresh polo shirt, her beaming like it was the last normal moment they’d ever share. “Come on, let’s take one for your sister,” she later recounted to PerthNow, her voice cracking over the phone. “He seemed quiet, but that’s Bill – always processing. I dropped him at Terminal 3 about 12:40 p.m., waved goodbye, and thought, ‘See you in nine days.’”

But Bill never made that 2:15 p.m. Qantas flight to Karratha, the gateway to his 12-on, 9-off gig at Fenner Dunlop’s Cape Lambert operations. CCTV footage, pieced together by WA Police Missing Persons detectives, paints a portrait of a man adrift. For a gut-wrenching 90 minutes, he wandered the terminal – pacing past check-in counters, staring blankly at departure boards, even lingering by a newsstand without buying so much as a gum packet. No frantic calls, no last-minute texts. Just a ghost in hi-vis sneakers, until 2:10 p.m., when he flagged a taxi outside the arrivals curb. “Trigg Beach,” he told the driver, according to the cabbie’s statement to cops. The 25-kilometer ride north along the Mitchell Freeway – past the glittering high-rises of Scarborough, the salt spray of the coast – should have taken 30 minutes. But Bill barely said a word, eyes fixed on the horizon like he was chasing a mirage.

By 2:40 p.m., the cab pulled up near the Trigg Island Surf Club – a rugged stretch of golden sand flanked by limestone cliffs and pounding waves, the kind of spot where locals launch drones at dawn and dreamers watch sunsets bleed into the sea. Witnesses – a cluster of surfers waxing boards by the kiosk and a jogger mid-stride – later told police they saw a tall, athletic bloke in his mid-20s trudging toward the water’s edge. “He looked lost, mate,” one bronzed wave-rider told 9News, shaking his head. “Like he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. Didn’t even glance at the breaks – just kept walking, straight into the foam.”

And then… nothing. No footprints in the wet sand leading back. No abandoned phone buzzing in the dunes. No sightings on the webcams that scan the beach for shark patrols. Bill Carter, the reserved uni grad from Murdoch who traded textbooks for torque wrenches and FIFO fly-ins, evaporated into the ether. His phone? Dead silent since 2:45 p.m., last pinged off a tower near the surf club before going dark. Bank cards? Untouched. Socials? Frozen on a Zambia safari snap from two weeks back, captioned “Finding peace in the wild.”

Jenny’s been a whirlwind of worry since Monday, when Fenner Dunlop raised the alarm: No-show on the manifest, no check-in at camp. “He’s not well, and he’s very vulnerable,” she pleaded in a tearful Facebook post that’s garnered 15,000 shares. “Bill’s been through hell lately – that trip to Africa was meant to reset him after a rough patch. Heartbreak, burnout from the mines… he came home quieter, sadder. But he’s a fighter. Please, if you’ve seen him…” The selfie – Bill’s arm slung around her, both forcing smiles in the café booth – has become the face of the manhunt, plastered on milk cartons at every Coles from Armadale to Alkimos.

Cops aren’t mincing words. “High-risk” isn’t jargon; it’s code for “we fear the worst.” Detective Sergeant Emma Hayes, leading the probe from Joondalup station, briefed the media Tuesday afternoon: “William’s movements suggest distress. The beach sighting raises grave concerns – drownings, self-harm… we’re treating this as urgent.” Drones buzz the cliffs at dawn, divers comb the rips where rip currents snatch souls without mercy, and cadaver dogs sniff the high-tide wrack. Volunteers – FIFO mates from the Pilbara, uni alumni from Bunbury Cathedral Grammar – have combed the heathlands behind the dunes, their calls echoing like unanswered prayers.

The FIFO factor adds a gritty undercurrent. Bill’s world was one of 12-hour shifts in scorching isolation, choppering in for the haul and out for the hollow highs of home. “The lifestyle chews you up,” one anonymous miner told Daily Mail Australia. “Long hauls, short fuses – blokes vanish into their heads out there. Bill was solid, though. Kept to himself, but always had your back on a breakdown.” His recent Zambia jaunt? A bid to shake the shadows, sources say – a solo safari to Victoria Falls, where the roar of the world’s largest curtain of water was meant to drown out the doubts. But back in Perth, the blues lingered. “He mentioned feeling ‘stuck,’” Jenny confided. “The mines pay the bills, but at what cost?”

Social media’s a storm of speculation and solidarity. #FindBillCarter trends with 50,000 posts – candlelit vigils at Trigg, GoFundMe for search costs hitting $20K, even a PerthNow Reddit thread buzzing with “What if he hitched to the hills?” theories. One user, u/Rush_Banana, summed the coastal curse: “Perth’s beaches eat people. Too many last-seens here.” Harsh, but true – from backpackers to battlers, the west coast claims its share.

As night falls on day six, Jenny huddles in her Kelmscott kitchen, phone glued to her palm, the selfie staring back like a ghost. “He hugged me tight at the drop-off,” she whispers. “Said ‘Love you, Mum.’ If you’re out there, Bill – come home. The world’s waiting.”

WA Police urge tips to 131 444 or Crime Stoppers at 1800 333 000. In a city built on booms and busts, one man’s missing shift has become a nation’s held breath. Did Bill chase the waves to wash away the weight, or is there a darker current pulling him under? The ocean keeps its secrets, but for Jenny, the tide can’t turn fast enough.

Somewhere along that endless shore, a lone flip-flop washes up – a cruel tease, or a call to keep searching? Perth’s not done with Bill Carter yet.