Agony goes on for family of missing girl Siriyakorn 'Bung' Siriboon

THE last time her family see her, she turns on the doorstep and says "Bye, Mum, see you later." It is about 8.20am on a Thursday, six months ago tomorrow.

She crosses the street to the footpath and heads towards high school, a few minutes' walk.

Two doors down, a neighbour glances through his living room window and glimpses her: a 13-year-old girl in a blue and white uniform and blue rain jacket, carrying a dark backpack.

She moves from right to left across his vision - for about three seconds, he later calculates.

Then she vanishes.

Whoever sees her next, you'd think, is the only person who knows what happened to her, and why. The only one who knows if she is alive or dead.

Her family call her Bung, a short name standing in for the one on her passport, Siriyakorn Siriboon. She is a good girl: diligent, punctual, polite, never wags school.

People trust her, so when she doesn't turn up in her year 7 class that June morning, everyone assumes she has stayed home because of illness. It's the first week of winter, what teachers call "flu season", when kids wake up feeling awful and can hardly drag themselves out of bed.

If Bung were a troubled child, a repeat truant, teachers might suspect she is off on an escapade of her own. But she is none of those things, so no one worries until later.

At 3.30pm her mother, Vanidda Pattison, realises her daughter isn't home at the usual time. She calls her name from the kitchen, wonders why there's no answer.

About 4pm, the telephone rings. Bung's stepfather, Fred Pattison, answers. It's Dyamai, Bung's school friend. She asks to talk to Bung about what to wear to football practice next day.

It's the first Fred has heard that Bung wants to play football, as well as training for athletics and the school's rock eisteddfod.

"Why didn't you talk to her at school?" he asks, puzzled.

The girl hesitates. Bung wasn't at school, she says.

That's how the torment starts. First they go to the school, Boronia Heights Secondary College. The principal, Kate Harnetty, is still in her office, working late.

Harnetty has seen Fred Pattison at school functions and noticed he is calm and polite, and shows more interest in his stepdaughter's progress and behaviour - both good - than many fathers do.

She doesn't know his wife as well because Vanidda, only four years out of Thailand, isn't confident speaking English with strangers.

The Pattisons try not to panic. They look in the school library to make sure Bung isn't there. The principal checks the year 7 roll then finds a teacher who confirms Bung hasn't been in class.

That's when Kate Harnetty knows they have reason to worry. Bung doesn't "fit the mould" of kids who play truant or run away from home, as she later recalls. "She's just a sweet little girl. It was out of character."

She urges them to go straight to the police.

Minutes later, Fred Pattison walks into the police station in Dorset Rd. On the wall in the waiting area is a poster that says: When someone goes missing a day spent waiting is a day lost.

It's true enough but truth does not always equal reality in police work. The reality is that more than 35,000 people go missing in Australia every year, and more than half of them are under 18. The overwhelming majority turn up safely in hours, days or weeks.

But it's almost impossible to guess which tiny proportion of missing person reports could turn into something more sinister.

The policewoman who appears from behind the one-way mirror is polite and sympathetic but has no reason to think the report is different from the many that come to nothing.

In any case, the search has to start close to home, with friends and family that parents can reach quicker than the police can.

Fred has been up all day doing chores after night shift as a fitter in a Scoresby confectionery factory. Normally, he would take a nap and go to work. Instead, he calls his boss to say he won't be in.

In fact, it turns out he will not be back for a month.

Fred and Vanidda stay up all night. First, they visit Bung's friend Dyamai to get the names and telephone numbers of Bung's other friends. They call or visit each one.

Every blank they draw deepens their fear - and sends widening ripples of alarm. Late-night phone calls between other parents, school friends and teachers draw more people into the puzzle but no one knows the answer.

By 8am the Pattisons are back at the school, distraught, waiting to talk to the one classmate they missed overnight, but the girl knows nothing.

Kate Harnetty sees the overnight change in the couple: the hollow eyes and anguished faces. She urges them to go back to the police.

As soon as they leave, she calls the station to make sure they are taken seriously. With Fred Pattison's full-arm tattoo, cropped hair and tiny plait, she knows he looks "a bit like a merchant seaman" and fears he and Vanidda might be dismissed as trouble-prone time wasters.

As Pattison says later, he "hassles the police a bit" that morning. At that point it's still not unreasonable to suspect that Bung has run off with someone, and is now nervous about coming home.

Her parents are desperate to believe this, but too fearful to wait and do nothing. They make up simple posters: a snapshot of a smiling Bung in school uniform.

One of Fred's workmates helps put up the posters all over the district, first on power poles along the route Bung walked to school, then further away, in shops, bus stops and railway stations.

About 2pm, Knox Leader trainee reporter Erin Michael is buying a coffee in the Boronia Mall when she sees Fred Pattison taping up a poster. She introduces herself.

"He seemed quite vague and shocked," she would recall. "He came over to the office. He was pretty emotional." Half an hour later she puts the story online. That night, the Herald Sun picks it up. So as day two ends, the mystery is public - but deepening.

With every hour, the Pattisons grow more fearful. They put up posters all weekend.

By Monday, June 6, Knox detectives are on the case. A police spokesman concedes they have not "ruled out abduction". It's the first time the spectre of kidnapping is officially raised.

Inevitably, there are false leads and false hopes. On Tuesday, June 7, the trail is muddied when a schoolboy reports he saw Bung in Chandler Rd after school on the day she disappeared.

It turns out to be another Asian girl in school uniform. A security guard thinks he saw Bung at the railway station. He is wrong, too.

On Thursday, June 9, police set up an "information caravan" along the route Bung usually walked to school. People trickle in to talk. There is speculation but not much information. Nothing leads anywhere.

Detectives need a door to knock on, a car to trace. At the end of the first week they have neither. Twenty-five weeks later, they still haven't.

IT is just after 8.20am on a recent Thursday, much the same as the morning Bung walked out the door of the little house halfway along Elsie St. This is where suburbia meets the bush.

Cockatoos, magpies, crows and parrots squabble in the trees that fill the big post-war house blocks next to the Dandenongs. It's more Neighbours territory than the place for a horror story.

In the cream brick veneer at No.55, Vanidda Pattison is packing. Months of waiting for the news she dreads have taken a toll, though she tries to mask unspeakable fears with animated conversation, smiles and laughs.

She stays busy, but when she stops for a photographer to take a picture, the camera does not lie. Frozen in every frame, her eyes are full of pain.

Reliving the moment she realised Bung hadn't got to school that day, she holds her face in her hands. A policewoman, herself a mother, puts her arm around Vanidda as she talks of the last time she saw her girl.

When Fred got home from nightshift about 7.30am that Thursday, Vanidda was cooking chicken curry soup and rice for breakfast. "Bung had that breakfast," explains Vanidda. "Then she took some for lunch. The canteen is not nice for her."

They almost always refer to her in the present tense and cling to the belief she is alive, somewhere, somehow. It's a way to cope with a loss beyond words.

Vanidda is small, wiry from a lifetime's hard work and the simple diet she has followed most of her 42 years. She grew up in Ubon Ratchathani province in northeast Thailand. Her first marriage ended when her two girls were small, and her parents helped raise them while she worked. Now she is going home to see her mother and father.

She and Fred own a house in Thailand and were intending to move there after Bung finished school. Now everything is on hold.

Stacked on the couch are gifts for her family and the Buddhist temple in their home town. Early on the day Bung went missing, Vanidda and Fred had gone to the Bunnings store in Bayswater to buy roofing screws and sensor lights to donate to the temple. They believe in karma. Faith helps them get through each cruel day.

Vanidda met Fred in Melbourne when she was on holiday seven years ago. He spoke passable Thai, having spent a year there on long-service leave and studying the language at home.

His interest in Buddhism grew from his dedication to sado karate, which he took up at 15 and has practised ever since.

He admires the Thai work ethic and family values. Vanidda - he calls her "Nid" for short - "is a hard worker", he says. "It's a cultural thing. A good thing."

Together they have transformed the garden of the house they bought from an old couple four years ago. They also pounded the streets "letter boxing" retail catalogues together to earn extra money and keep fit.

Pattison understands self-reliance and hard work. He grew up in a battling family of nine around Queenscliff and Portarlington, then moved to Melbourne as an apprentice fitter at Carlton United Breweries, aged 17.

He still barracks for Geelong; Cats premiership posters are taped next to the front door but he's not had much appetite for footy since June 2.

It's the same with the fishing boat in the yard. He bought it last year but has never used it. He is holding down his job, thanks to an understanding employer, but the rest of his time is devoted to holding the family together, including Bung's big sister, Siriporn, now 20, a student at Swinburne.

Pattison is calm and self-possessed. He doesn't swear or bluster to mask his anguish, and he looks people in the eye. It's clear why investigators soon decided he had nothing to do with his step-daughter's disappearance.

He bears no grudges that detectives questioned them so closely. That is how it goes when someone vanishes. Family members and friends have to be cleared first. Then neighbours and workmates, outwards in widening circles. But if that doesn't work, then what? That's the question the Puma Taskforce faces.

'What we've got," says an exasperated Detective Superintendent Brett Guerin, "is a big bag of fresh air."

Police are rarely so frank in public. But the dozen investigators recruited for the taskforce in October know what their boss means. This could be the toughest assignment of their careers.

Not only do they have no leads, they are starting behind scratch because of a false one.

On June 29, almost four weeks after Bung disappeared, a Boronia primary pupil was late for school. Asked why, she lied that a grey-haired man wearing a surgical mask had tried to force her into a green Holden station wagon.

Trapped in the lie, the girl did not confess for more than a week. The nonexistent kidnapper and his green Holden had been widely publicised because the supposed "victim" was also an Asian girl

and the scene was near where Bung lived.

The hoax overshadowed a genuine abduction attempt a week earlier. On June 21, a middle-aged man with greying hair and decayed teeth had tried to drag a 16-year-old schoolgirl into a blue sedan in Bedford Rd, Ringwood East.

Investigators don't want to pin their hopes on the Ringwood incident but they can't ignore the fact it happened only 10 minutes from Elsie St, less than three weeks after Bung disappeared.

When the man with the bad teeth and blue car is found, he will have the taskforce's undivided attention. Meanwhile, no one wants to say they are most likely looking for a killer. Even though the homicide squad is running the taskforce, and no matter how likely abduction and murder might seem, investigators must keep an open mind.

Without leads, they have to consider all possibilities - even the faint one that Bung left voluntarily, which would mean no crime was committed. It's true some teenagers stage their disappearance but they almost always have reasons to leave home and not return. The investigators are sure none of those usual sordid reasons applies.

Bung was happy at home and school. Her behaviour was good, her attitude consistent and did not change in the days or weeks before she disappeared.

One by one, the taskforce has crossed off theories.

Bung had Facebook friends, just as several million others do. Police have combed the family's computers but found nothing to show she struck up contact with anyone outside her own group.

She left her mobile phone home the day she disappeared but investigators soon worked out that was not unusual.

She had wanted to go to school earlier than usual one day, but police found she had wanted to meet her friend Dyamai, not anyone suspicious.

They are left with a likely scenario that she was lured or forced into a car without being seen. If that did happen, no one wants to speculate on what happened next. But murder isn't an automatic assumption. There have been well publicised cases overseas of girls being abducted and imprisoned, some for years. A copycat crime can't be ruled out.

Neither can police rule out the possibility Bung was abducted by human traffickers to use or sell into what police call "sexual servitude". They checked eastern suburbs brothels after a tip-off that a young Asian girl had been seen in one, and would do the same again. Thai nationals have been involved in sexual slavery scandals in Australia and a Thai speaker might have been able to lure Bung into a car.

Fighting pollution, with Green Ganpati's blessings

Thousands of idols made from hazardous materials like Plaster of Paris, coated with chemical paints containing injurious substances like Mercury, Cadmium, Lead and Carbon will be immersed in the city's water bodies yet again this year, poisoning it irrevocably.

Amidst this bleak environmental scenario, a faint ray of hope can be discerned, shone by a group of enterprising young students. Last year, this zealous lot at the KPB Hinduja College at Charni Road joined forces to set the bar for eco-friendly worship, modelling their Ganpati idol with newspapers.

The unexpected success of their venture has not only won them accolades, but also a slew of orders for similar models this year.

Responding to this unprecedented windfall, the kids have formed a body, referring to themselves quite fittingly as 'Youth Unite'. This group comprises recent pass outs, as well as present students. Their first were none other than officials of the college management body, who placed orders for two idols.

The novel venture was the brainchild of the NSS section of the student body, who got together with the past club members to create a one-of-its-kind eco-friendly Ganpati idol for their college celebrations.

In course of the workshop, about 25 students were taught how to make Ganpati idols with materials that were easily biodegradable, such as used paper from their notebooks.

Akshay Pawar, who passed out from the college earlier this year, was a member of this student body with a conscience. "We are very happy with the success of our enterprise. Officials from the management were the first takers, asking us to make two Ganpati idols this year."

P Aditya, presently a third year student of the college said, "This Ganpati idol doesn't have the slightest trace of plastic. Apart from the two orders received from college officials, we have received more than three orders from others. We will only ask to be compensated for the building materials.

No making charges will be imposed. Some of our group members go to other colleges, and they have been creating awareness about these eco-friendly idols in their respective colleges.

We will start modeling our idols within ten days. We also await permission from the college authorities to impart our skills to students of other colleges."

Jayesh Patel, vice principal of KPB Hinduja College, said, "We were very impressed by the zeal that they displayed to protect the environment. We have decided to support them this year. We will encourage them to teach pupils at other colleges the skills they have acquired."

Food supply chain crucial

WHEN people think of improving food security, the focus is generally on improving production.

However, regional co-ordinator for south Asia and Africa with the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) John Dixon said working on the food supply chain could also be crucial in feeding more people in places such as Africa and the subcontinent.

“Without a doubt, there is quantity and quality of grain lost in the food chain, and it is worse for certain grains.

“There are more losses in pulses and maize, which have a softer coat, than in other staples such as rice and sorghum, which are harder,” said Dr Dixon, who is also ACIAR’s senior advisor of cropping systems and economics.

He said grain stored in third world areas was more susceptible to problems such as insect damage and mould, while there are also widespread problems with fungal diseases such as aflatoxin, a fungus prevalent in maize and groundnuts, which can cause death to those who eat contaminated grain in worst case scenarios.

But there is renewed interest in cutting post-harvest losses of staple crops in developing countries.

Dr Dixon said a second wave of investment in grain protection technologies was taking place, following a similar push in the 1980s.

“In the 1980s, there were big investments from many countries to cut back waste, especially in Africa, but not a lot of progress was made, and efforts stagnated a little.

“Now, there are some indications that things are moving in the right direction again, especially in south Asia, where you can walk into farmers’ houses and see silos with metal lids, where previously grain had been stored in sacks and was much more susceptible to damage.

“To a lesser extent, the same thing is also beginning to happen in Africa in places such as Kenya.

“There are now large enough volumes of grain about that the farmers can get local workshops to manufacture the silos for them.”

Dr Dixon also said there had been success with a micro-form of the grain bags popular in Australia.

Does this make YOUR WAIST smaller?

How would you like to lose four inches off your waist in two minutes? Poof! Elizabeth Joyce of Callisto Couture Custom Corsets can make it happen.

"I have a 24-inch waist, but when it's laced up all the way in a corset, it's only 20 inches," says our corset model, Winnipeg burlesque entertainer Miss Angela La Muse. She owns a midnight-blue number with black trim and Swarovski crystals made by the Exchange District entrepreneur.

"The most difference I've seen in a corseted waist was nine inches smaller, and that was a man. But it was a man who was used to wearing corsets," says 39-year-old Joyce, who creates the fantasy garments start to finish.

Here's how it works: The steel or modern plastic "boning" cinches the entire core of the body and quite tightly at the waist. Someone near and/or dear to you can pull the lacing in the back and tie it firmly, or you can lace it ahead of time and do up the front closure yourself. Hey, presto! Madame (or Monsieur) has a slimmed waistline. And one can still breathe, though gently.

You'll want to take a deep breath before reading this, though. Ms. Joyce charges $800 and up for these custom garments, which take up to 40 hours make. They also require exotic materials "from weaving countries around the world." She notes her customers are often "confident women in their 40s and 50s with disposable income."

In fact, her website, www.callistocouture.ca, includes praise from the likes of Winnipeg philanthropist Gail Asper. "Exactly one year to the day I opened my business, Gail was photographed on the red carpet in Ottawa in one of my corsets. I took it as a sign I was at the right place in my career."

Any difficulty getting customers in Winnipeg at those prices? "No, I haven't noticed any," smiles Joyce, who works in a romantic lilac-coloured factory at 506-63 Albert St.

"I make the shape out of stiff German Cotil which won't rip or give way and insert custom-sized steel or plastic boning, in the place of whalebone used in the old days," she says.

Different parts of the garment, such as bra cups and front panels, often have a special fabric covering of their own, so there are delicate patchworks to be sewn together. This is a fantasy garment of a lady's own choosing, with suggestions from the Callisto Couture portfolio on display.

Joyce's little factory is outfitted with an industrial sewing machine that goes at lightning speed (she let me drive it and I almost landed up in the next office), an industrial steam iron and big hoops of steel and plastic to embrace the body and mould it. Then she adds strong but esthetically pleasing laces to finish the outfit. You can substitute ribbon ties for fun, but if you want a dramatic change to your waist, heavy-duty laces are the way to go.

These corsets are so pretty they don't need to be hidden unless they're supporting another garment, like a ball gown or wedding dress. Miss La Muse says she wears her custom blue corset over and under outfits, or alone as part of a costume onstage. The cinching gives her an hourglass look from the front, and a derrière that's a perfect upside-down heart.

Joyce often rescues desperate brides who bought their expensive gowns months before the wedding "and now there's two weeks to go and the dress won't fit." And then there are grads who just wants a sparkly corset top, to wear with a glamorous skirt.

At the opposite end of the age spectrum, she hears from annoyed grandmothers whose doctors have ordered a corset for back support. They look at these ugly things and say, "Ugh! I am still a woman, for heaven's sake."

Corset design seems like a strange second career for a scientist who used to work for Fisheries and Oceans Canada. But Joyce got restless in her early 30s -- one grows bored of zooplankton. So, six years ago, she made a radical change.

She always sewed, but didn't know which direction to go with it. "This may sound funny, but I put it out to the universe and the answer came back 'corsets,' and here I am."

Joyce believes she is well-suited to the work. "I am particular, and patient." Plus, she loves nature, and most of her fabrics are from natural substances such as silk, cotton and linen with colours from natural dyes such as tree bark. "When you iron that fabric, you get a fragrant woodsy smell."

A well-cared-for Callisto Couture corset, Joyce says, could last a lifetime. "It's something you can pass on to your daughters and granddaughters."

Think of it as a piece of fabric art -- and a hint at grandma's secret life.