Tristan Frank, 14, who disappeared in the Outback three years ago, ‘was chased away by a feather-footed entity’, his family believes

The family of a boy who disappeared three years ago believe he was chased away by ‘feather-footed’ men capable of killing.

Tristan Frank, 14, went missing near the remote community of Balgo, close to the WA/NT border, on December 3, 2020, while traveling with family to a funeral.

At a hearing at the WA Coroner’s Court on Friday, some members of the local community believed he could have been hidden in the sand dunes of the nearby Tanami Desert.

Members of Tristan’s family agreed that he may have been taken by the “featherfoot” men – powerful spirits that some in the culture believe move without being seen or heard and can cause death.

Tristan was traveling between NT and WA of his grandparents who had dropped him off at Balgo to catch up with his brother. He spent the night talking and smoking cannabis, but the next morning he mysteriously disappeared.

An inquest into his disappearance at the WA Coroner’s Court on Friday revealed his family believes he may have been chased away and hidden by ‘feather-footed’ men (Balgo photo)

In the opening statement of Friday’s inquest, coroner’s counsel addressed for the first time what Tristan’s family and friends thought could have happened to him.

‘Many family members expressed their spiritual beliefs in this [Tristan] “He may have been taken by ‘feather-footed’ men who made him invisible and hid him in the lands outside the city,” the coroner’s counsel said. according to the ABC.

According to counsel, it was considered normal for the extended family to care for each other’s children – and so Tristan’s grandparents felt comfortable when he asked to stay overnight in Balgo during the trio’s journey from Nyirripi to Noonkanbah as they continued their journey .

The next day, December 5, when the funeral was canceled, his grandparents tried to call him several times but were unable to contact him before going back to pick him up.

Tristan’s brother said he looked “happy and smiling,” and his aunt, who was the last to see him, also had no reason to believe anything was wrong.

When his grandparents returned, no one they spoke to had seen Tristan or knew where he was, so they called the police on December 6 to report him missing.

Police launched a cross-border search across thousands of kilometers of desert and dirt roads in an attempt to find him, but to no avail.

Despite installing stop-motion cameras in nearby caves in the hope of spotting him, along with using aircraft, drones and infrared technology, Tristan was never found.

The community even invited a ‘maban’ to track him down; traditional healers sometimes tried to communicate and reason with spirits.

Tristan’s grandparents dropped him off in Balgo (pictured) to stay with extended family who said he was ‘happy and smiling’ when they last saw him

His family believes that ‘ferrymen’, powerful native spirits that move without being seen or heard and are capable of causing death, hid him in the Tanami Desert (pictured)

The local community began discussing Tristan in the weeks following his disappearance, with many believing that the ‘ferrymen’ had hid him in the Tanami Desert.

The board of coroners spoke to a survival expert who said the chances of Tristan surviving more than two days were extremely slim.

‘Dr. Paul Luckin … opined that this was the case in this case [he] got lost in the Balgo area, where the temperature had reached 42 to 45 degrees Celsius without rain, he estimated someone as [Tristan] could have succumbed to the circumstances within one or two days,” the counsel said.

It was also noted that Balgo was not Tristan’s traditional lands that might have influenced his ability to utilize local survival skills.

Six weeks after his disappearance, Senior Sergeant Charlie Moylan, head of Balgo police station, said there were no leads for his unit to follow.

“No information has been received from outside the community that the missing boy has been seen or that he is elsewhere,” he said.

It is believed that in the absence of a breakthrough, Tristan could have left the community and hitchhiked, became disoriented and lost, or was exposed to foul play.

He was never found.

The mystery behind Tristan’s disappearance has also deepened, in part because his family declined to comment publicly on the situation.

The coroner will now decide whether there is sufficient evidence available to determine whether Tristan died.