Pheobe Bishop’s younger brother has asked his distraught mother a heartbreaking question as the search for the missing teen enters its eleventh day.
Pheobe, 17, was last seen being driven in a grey Hyundai to Airport Drive, Bundaberg, on the morning of May 15 by her two housemates, Tanika Bromley and James Wood, from a Gin Gin property.
The teen was scheduled to fly from Bundaberg to Western Australia, via Brisbane, but never made it to her flight.
Detectives have been trawling the Good Night Scrub National Park south of Gin Gin for two days, with police deploying cadaver dogs to help search the dense bushland on the weekend.
On Monday, Pheobe’s mother Kylie Johnson expressed her ongoing efforts to quell her brother’s confusion as to why his sister has not come home.
“As we enter day 11 of Pheobe still not being home our numbness to our tears, to our hearts breaking and this hell is heavy. Not knowing what to say, what to do or even how to continue to live in this cyclone of uncertainty,” Ms Johnson wrote on Facebook.
“The tears come, the anger and frustrations come and most of all our hearts are shattering more and more each day.
“Your little man/brother asked yesterday, ‘Why won’t Phee take our calls? She always takes our calls!’
“Mate I wish I knew but we have to believe that the police and the lights that our amazing community are leaving on will … bring her home to us.”
Police confirmed CCTV footage showed Pheobe had never entered the terminal, despite her roommates claiming they dropped her off at the airport.
Queensland Police have widened their search beyond the Gin Gin area, in desperate hopes of finding her.
On Saturday morning, Pheobe’s family issued a desperate public plea calling out to their “Wild Gypsy Banshee” to be found and returned home.
“Phee has always been strong willed and followed her own beat to life,” the statement read.
“I’ve always called her my ‘Wild Gypsy Banshee’. I’ve told everyone since Phee’s birth that she’s the one I always expected to call me from overseas saying, ‘hey mumzie mate; I’m in Amsterdam and checking in.’
“You can’t tame Phee’s spirit, empathy or fight for life. She is sassy, feisty and loves harder than anyone I’ve ever meet.
“Phee loves beyond comprehension and is loyal to her siblings.
“Phee just loved life; music blaring, she’d say, ‘come on mumzie, let’s dance.'”
Her family further added their young daughter is an “essential” part of their lives and they need her home.
A series of social media posts made by Phoebe before her suspicious disappearance have come to light, indicating the teen had a complicated relationship with her mother and had been in and out of home for years.
In a TikTok video the teen is understood to be conversing with her younger self, she wrote: “Do me and mum get along and did we finally make her proud?”
“I replied, ‘she will never be proud we don’t see nor talk to her but it’s better like this.'”
Ms Johnson has been regularly attempting to reach out to her daughter on social media since the disappearance.
