The daughter of an 80-year-old cruise passenger whose body was found on a remote island in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef has accused the operator of a “failure of care and common sense” after the ship sailed without her mother following an organised hike, setting out a stark sequence of events that she says ended with the older woman dying alone off a rugged trail. Katherine Rees said her mother, Sydney resident Suzanne Rees, was on the second day of a 60-day circumnavigation of Australia aboard the Coral Adventurer when passengers went ashore at Lizard Island on Saturday to climb Cook’s Look, the island’s summit. In a statement released on Thursday, she said the family had been told it was “a very hot day” and that her mother “felt ill on the hill climb” and was instructed to head back down, unescorted, before the ship later departed “apparently without doing a passenger count.” “At some stage in that sequence, or shortly after, Mum died, alone,” she said, adding that the family was “shocked and saddened that the Coral Adventurer left Lizard Island after an organised excursion without my Mum.”
Authorities said a search was initiated late on Saturday after the ship reported a missing passenger, and a helicopter crew located Suzanne Rees’s body on Sunday near the Cook’s Look track, several dozen metres off the path. Police described the death as “sudden” and “non-suspicious” pending a coroner’s investigation, while search reports indicated she appeared to have fallen on steep ground. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) said it was examining why the passenger may not have been accounted for when the vessel left Lizard Island and would determine if there had been any non-compliance with required procedures. Queensland Police confirmed the case had been referred to the coroner, and a workplace safety regulator is also investigating.
According to vessel tracking cited by AMSA, the Coral Adventurer left Lizard Island on Saturday afternoon and later turned back towards the island that night after the absence was discovered, returning in the early hours of Sunday as search teams began operating by land, sea and air. The initial alert to authorities came around 9pm on Saturday after the master of the ship notified AMSA that the passenger had not returned. In their public statements, investigators have focused on the boarding and counting of passengers following the shore excursion, a routine step that is commonly enforced on coastal expedition cruises.
Coral Expeditions said it was “deeply sorry” and expressed condolences to the family while pledging full cooperation with all inquiries. “We have expressed our heartfelt condolences to the Rees family and remain deeply sorry that this has occurred,” chief executive Mark Fifield said, adding that the company would continue to support relatives through the immediate aftermath while declining to discuss specifics during the active investigations. The firm acknowledged a “tragic death of a passenger on the Coral Adventurer during an excursion to Lizard Island,” and noted that a search and rescue operation had been launched before Queensland Police notified the company that the woman had been found deceased.