Despite the number of discounted sightings, the Salleses have not lost hope
of finding their cherished family member.
'The mafia up on the hill'
Each year, more than
38,000 people are reported missing in Australia. Although 95 per cent are
found within a week, about 2,000 people remain missing long-term. Nicola
Sallese is one of them. His story is part of an SBS series on missing
persons from multicultural backgrounds.
Wearing his trademark flat cap, Nicola "Nick" Sallese gazes out from the
window of the Don Store grocery in the main street of Sheffield, in
north-west Tasmania. Ann Ridgway passes the portrait, drawn by a local
artist and encircled with loving words penned by Sallese's younger son,
Jason, almost daily.
"It absolutely haunts me at times," she says. "You think, 'If only you could
answer us. Where are you, Nick?'"
A long-time family friend, Ridgway was one of the last people to see the
69-year-old before he vanished in November 2008.
She had been close to Nicola's wife, Jill, who died of cancer in 2000. The
pair shared a love of lace-making and other crafts.
A talented wood turner, Sallese – an electrician with the Hydro-Electric
Commission (now Hydro Tasmania) for 36 years – made Jill's spinning wheel
and lace bobbins.
Picturesque Sheffield, 90 kilometres west of Launceston, is surrounded by
forests and rolling fields.
The Salleses settled there in 1981 after spells in Gowrie Park and George
Town, the moves dictated by Nicola's job.
After renting a "Hydro home" in town, they bought a property on Vinegar
Hill, overlooking Sheffield; Sallese did the renovations, installing an
Italian tiled fireplace and cross-hatched timber window frames.
Locals joked that Sallese, an Italian migrant who never lost his thick
accent, was "the mafia up on the hill", Ridgway recalls, and, "he'd play on
that, he'd tell them to 'watch out!'"
She and her husband, Selwyn, were often up at Vinegar Hill, while their
house in town was a second home for Nick and Jason. Although often away
working, Sallese – a dapper figure with a neat moustache – always made it
back for his soccer-mad sons' weekend matches.
On Friday, 14 November, the eve of the anniversary of Jill's death, Sallese
visited Ann Ridgway and paid for his daily Meals on Wheels – friends of hers
ran the service.
A keen lawn bowls player, on the Saturday he travelled to Turners Beach, on
the north-west coast, for a match. On Sunday evening, he phoned Nick, who
lives in Devonport. Nick promised to call over after work the following day
to fix the timer clock on his father's microwave: something he had been
promising to do for a while.
On Monday the 17th, at about 12.30, Meals on Wheels volunteers arrived at
Nicola's house. No one was in. As was usual when he was not home, they took
the meal to Ridgway's place – Sallese normally collected it later in the
day.
Ridgway was surprised to see them, since Sallese had told her he planned to
spend the day gardening and doing odd jobs. She rang him at about 2pm; there
was no answer.
Nick, meanwhile, had decided to postpone visiting his father until the
following day. However, despite repeatedly calling, he could not get hold of
him.
Concerned, he drove over to Vinegar Hill that evening, where he found the
house locked up, washing hanging on the line and Sallese's dog, Milo, in his
kennel. Letting himself in, he noticed his father's toiletry bag half-packed
and an open, empty suitcase.
After waiting a couple of hours, Nick called Ridgway. As she tells it: "He
rang me and said, 'Dad's still not here, when do we panic?' I said, 'I think
we'd better do it now.'"
The best dressed man you ever met
On a sunny afternoon in autumn, Sheffield Bowls Club buzzes sedately as a
dozen members rehearse their throws on the spotless green. In the past,
Nicola Sallese would probably have been among them.
A long-standing member, he rarely missed a match or practice day – or, in
the off-season, one of the regular teas or social gatherings.
"He was a very likeable person, very decent and sociable, and he mixed
well," remembers fellow member Jean Bailey, perched at a table in the little
clubhouse.
"If you saw him in town, he would greet you very politely. He was the
smartest dressed man you ever met, always immaculate, often in a collar and
tie."
Nicola was "a thorough gentleman, full of humour", agrees Nick Sallese's
wife, Dana, describing her father-in-law as "a very friendly, lively man".
Sallese had his routines. Wednesdays and Saturdays he was at the Bowls Club
– and, sometimes, the RSL, for a meal. He shopped in Devonport, always
choosing the same spot in the supermarket car park.
He filled up at the Caltex service station in Sheffield, where he knew the
mechanic, David Archibald. Driving to Launceston, Devonport and local towns,
he always followed the same routes.
In the 12 months before he disappeared, Bailey and her husband, John,
noticed him becoming forgetful. He would turn up for a Saturday afternoon
home match as early as 9am, when the green was still being mowed.
Once he travelled to an away match in Latrobe without his kit. The Bowls
Club's president, Dennis Rockliffe, would phone him to alert him to club
meetings, but – uncharacteristically – he did not attend.
The family was also worried. According to Jason, Sallese had to ring Nick
almost daily "to ask what day it was and what he was supposed to be doing".
Ridgway says he was "really very embarrassed" about his memory problems. The
Baileys helped to arrange a mental health assessment; the diagnosis was
early dementia.
Sallese began taking dementia medication. Realistic about the future, he put
his house on the market and looked into buying a unit in town. Jean Bailey
suspects he fretted, needlessly, about becoming "a nuisance" to his family.
His driving grew increasingly erratic, and he wrote off his silver Toyota
Camry while trying to swat a fly. After replacing it with another silver,
second-hand Camry, registration FH 2973, he hit a parked car in the Bowls
Club car park, damaging his left-hand panel.
He ran a red light and on one occasion drove on the wrong side of the road.
There were family discussions; Sallese was desperate to hang on to his
licence.
Waiting for him to come home
Not far outside Sheffield, on the road leading east, is the turn-off for
Vinegar Hill. Between 1pm and 2pm on 17 November, mechanic David Archibald
passed Sallese about 500 metres beyond the turn-off. The pair exchanged
waves. And that was the last confirmed sighting of Jason's and Nick's
father.
That night, waiting in vain for him to come home, Nick called Jason, who had
moved to Seven Mile Beach, near Hobart, 18 months earlier. Did his brother
have any clue where Sallese could be? Jason was at a loss.
Nick filed a missing persons report. He also contacted police in Launceston,
in case the anniversary had prompted Sallese to head to the city's Carr
Villa cemetery – Jill's cremated remains are there.
On Tuesday, Jason phoned. "So, where was he?" he asked Nick, who had stayed
at Vinegar Hill overnight. Hearing that Sallese was still missing, he packed
a bag, took leave from his electrician's job and drove to Sheffield, just
over three hours north.
Initially, the family assumed Sallese had broken down – it would just be a
matter of finding him by the roadside, they thought. "There were only so
many roads he used to travel," explains Jason. However, police searches of
the area failed to uncover any trace.
The family threw themselves into the hunt. While Nick remained at the house
in case Sallese returned, and to conduct media interviews, Jason spent up to
18 hours a day on the road, ranging as far afield as Smithton, in Tasmania's
far north-west, and George Town, way over east.
He would drive, stop somewhere and walk for two kilometres, then drive, stop
and walk for another two kilometres, checking every back road, every forest
track, down every embankment. Returning to Vinegar Hill at night, he would
find a meal waiting for him, dropped off by some thoughtful local.
Although exhausted, Jason could not sleep. "Your brain's going at 100 miles
per hour, and every bump you hear, you think, 'Was that the back door?' I
didn't even lie down; I just sat on the couch in front of the TV, watching
infomercials."
The family's anxiety was heightened by the knowledge that Sallese, who had
high blood pressure, was without his hypertension drugs.
At the Bowls Club, and in the wider Sheffield community, people were
dismayed by his disappearance. Shops and businesses displayed missing
posters and flyers. Many locals, including the Ridgways, joined the search.
So did Sallese's elder brother, Guiseppe, who lived in Devonport; he trawled
forests and river banks, looked near canyons and dams.
"The place was scoured," says Gerald Davies, the estate agent who was
negotiating the sale of Vinegar Hill. Davies, who relays a puzzling story of
discovering the house open but no one home when he arrived with prospective
buyers a day or two before Sallese went missing, adds: "Some of these roads
were searched three and four and five times."
Early on, police were diverted by what proved to be a false sighting of
Sallese at Penguin, on the north coast. Another sighting at Southport, in
Tasmania's far south, at 7pm on the 17th, seemed more promising.
A tourist from Sydney, Richard Robinson, reported being approached outside
some public toilets by an elderly man fitting Sallese's description, down to
the Italian accent. He seemed vague and asked for directions to Seven Mile
Beach, according to Robinson, who consulted his road atlas and told him it
was 100 miles to the north.
After seeing a TV report about the case a few days later, Robinson told
police he was "certain that this was the person that I had spoken to at
Southport".
Seven Mile Beach is where Jason lives, and Sallese had been looking forward
to travelling there the following Saturday with Nick and Dana to celebrate
his granddaughter Olivia's first birthday.
Did he mix up the dates, forget the plan and try to drive down by himself?
Dana thought it likely, particularly as he had been mortified at forgetting
another grandchild's birthday and determined not to repeat the lapse.
Police searched the Southport area – eventually. Jason and Nick were
exasperated by the sluggish pace, as they saw it, of the official operation.
They organised their own two helicopter sweeps of the north-west, including
Cradle Mountain. But Sallese was nowhere to be seen, nor, bafflingly, was
his car.
After nearly three weeks, the brothers wound down their intensive efforts.
"There comes a point," says Jason, "where you just go, 'Well, where have you
gone? How have we not found him?'
"I was almost at breaking-point. I was so tired, it was like I was drunk.
The worst thing was letting go, because that's the last thing you want to
do. But it just took over everything, and I had to step away."
Hydro in his blood
The grounds of the house where Nick and Jason grew up are overgrown and
neglected now, the property having been rented out for nearly a decade.
Wandering through, Ann Ridgway recalls when they were lovingly cared for,
when there was a rose garden, and grapevines, and a lemon tree.
Jill Sallese's chook shed is still there. She kept sheep and goats in the
paddocks. Once a year, Sallese sheared the sheep; she spun the wool and
knitted jumpers.
They were "an ideal couple, devoted to each other", relates Jason. "She was
dad's priority, and that never changed, his whole life." When she became
ill, he quit the Hydro to look after her.
The second of six children, Nicola was born on 10 October, 1939, in Vasto, a
hilltop town on Italy's Adriatic coast. The family moved twice, settling in
the western port of Livorno.
During Nicola's wartime childhood, he was struck by an Italian Army truck
while playing by a roadside and knocked unconscious into a ditch.
After being apprenticed to a cobbler, in 1960 Sallese migrated to Australia,
where, following a brief stint in Fremantle, he followed Giuseppe to
Tasmania and joined the Hydro as a trades assistant.
He met Jill Pitman, as she then was, at a dance in Launceston, and the
couple married in 1967. Nick was born the following year, Jason in 1969.
The family relocated to Italy when the boys were small, but returned to
Tasmania after six months. Sallese became a troubleshooter for the Hydro,
travelling all over the state.
"If there was anything wrong, he was the first man they sent for," says
Jason. "Pretty much every dam, every power station, every sub-station, if he
wasn't in the crew that built it, he'd worked on it or done maintenance."
Jason remembers backyard footy games with Sallese. He remembers his father
cheering him and Nick on at the soccer and cricket, taking them on fishing
trips and tending his vegetable garden.
The family holidayed at St Helen's, on Tasmania's east coast, and piled into
an old station wagon one summer for a camping adventure on the mainland.
Nicola and Jill "went without a lot just so that Nick and I could progress",
Jason thinks.
Despite working away, Nicola was heavily involved in his sons' lives, always
ready to lend a hand or offer advice. A "strict but fair" father, he passed
on good manners and a piercing sense of right and wrong.
"Whenever we needed him, like when we got our first cars and they broke
down, he was very generous with his time," stresses Jason.
"He was always interested in what we were doing, and that pretty much
carried on when we had our own kids."
He wouldn't leave the dog by himself
When Jill died, Sallese was bereft. Yet Dana was struck by how her father-in-law
found "positive ways to fill his life" – including his beloved bowls, and
gardening, with his "best buddy" Milo at his side.
He enjoyed weekly dinners with friends, and in 2007 took a TAFE English course,
writing that he was "really enjoying his life" and hoped to "get even more time
on this earth".
Above all, he doted on his grandchildren. Nick and Dana had two sons, Ben and
Zachary; Jason had Olivia.
"He just loved them and spoiled them rotten," smiles Jason. At least once a
week, Sallese would call over to play with the boys, staying for a cup of tea or
a meal. Occasionally he babysat. To Dana, he was a "very involved grandfather".
Jason was close to his father. "We had a lot in common, and we were always
bouncing ideas off each other," he says.
"He was my dad, but he was a mate as well." They kept in regular phone contact
after Jason moved south.
As the dementia took hold, Sallese became frustrated by his own forgetfulness.
The drugs did not seem to help. The family had to remind him to keep medical
appointments.
In November 2008, two weeks before he disappeared, Sallese dropped in on
Guiseppe; however, he stayed for only five minutes and declined a coffee – which
was "very strange behaviour for him", his brother, who died a few years ago,
told police. Nicola also acted oddly towards family members visiting from Italy.
On 9 November, he forgot to show up for Sunday lunch at Nick's house. The
following Thursday, he visited the grandsons on his way home from Burnie, where
he had been supposed to see his specialist – he hadn't been able find him, he
told Dana. Otherwise, he seemed fine, departing with his customary, "Well, I'd
better get home, that dog will be wondering where I am!"
On Saturday the 15th, at Turners Beach, Sallese appeared "in good spirits",
according to the Bowls Club's Dennis Rockliffe, and he joined fellow team
members for dinner back at the club that evening.
When he failed to return home on the Monday, his sons knew something was wrong.
"Put it this way," explains Jason, "we knew dad wouldn't leave the dog at home
by himself. If he was capable of getting home, he'd get home."
In January 2009, police used sonar equipment to try to locate Sallese's car in
Lake Barrington, west of Sheffield.
In May, and again in September, they searched the Southport area once more. In
February 2010, search and rescue officers scoured the Dasher River Gorge,
outside Sheffield.
Detective Inspector David Wright, who reviewed the investigation in December
2008, termed it "remarkable" that the Camry had not been found.
In April 2012, the Tasmanian Coroner concluded that Sallese died on or about the
day he went missing, and that there were no suspicious circumstances. (Police
had ruled out foul play after combing his house and grounds.)
Sergeant Anthea Maingay, now in charge of the case, believes it "quite possible"
that the car went over an embankment in a remote spot, out of sight of searchers
and the public, and that vegetation has since grown up over it.
Alternatively, she notes, it could be submerged in water. "But with the
significant floods here last year, you'd think that had the car gone into one of
the rivers, it would have washed up. We've had a lot of water through and
nothing has come up."
The last reported sighting of Sallese was in southern Tasmania last December;
like numerous others, it was investigated and discounted.
Since his father vanished, Jason has married Leah and had another daughter,
Phoebe. Nick has had a daughter, Gabi. Recently, the family erected a plaque in
the Carr Villa cemetery, next to Jill's ashes. "Nicola (Nick) Sallese, dearly
loved and missed," it reads.
Those who cherish him have not given up hope. Whenever Jason sees a silver
Camry, "I'll always glance at the number plate, even now," he says. Ann Ridgway
does the same, looking out for the brown nodding dog on Sallese's rear parcel
shelf. At the Bowls Club, members stage an annual competition in memory of Jill
and Nicola.
Last January, the family parked a mobile billboard plastered with large
photographs of Sallese and his car in a prominent spot in Sheffield. In March, a
local drone pilot recorded footage of inaccessible bushland outside the town.
Jason runs a Facebook page, 'Help Find Nicola Sallese'. "You just hope the next
person to like your page might be the person that goes, 'Hang on a minute, I
know something about this,'" he observes.
Jason's biggest worry is that responsibility for finding Sallese will eventually
fall to his daughters. "You hope there's never a day when they've got to say,
'Right, now it's our turn.'"
He reflects: "He's still out there somewhere, which does your head in a bit. I
remember meeting a lady whose dad is over 90 and missing. She said the thing she
didn't like was, every time it rained, knowing he was out in it somewhere.
"There's not much you can say to that except, 'Yep, I understand where you're
at.'"