Son waits as divers join hunt for woman

NO SIGN: Fiona Wills' whereabouts are a mystery. PHOTO/FILE

A specialist dive search team will be used today to search six garden lakes which could hide the secret of what has happened to farming widow Fiona Wills, who has been missing northwest of Napier since Tuesday night.

Son and former Federated Farmers national president and 2014 Agricultural Communicator of the Year Bruce Wills said last night from family property Trelinnoe that another day of searching yesterday provided no clues about his 77-year-old mother's whereabouts.

Suffering alzheimer's, she has not seen since she left the homestead to feed the chickens at the property about 6km off State Highway 2 and just east of Te Pohue, about 6pm on Tuesday.

While Mr Wills was absent in Wellington, other family members began looking for her only a short time after she was last seen.

The Lowe Corporation Hawke's Bay rescue helicopter joined a search soon after police were alerted, and specialist land search crews worked through the area and the next day, bolstered by dozens of neighbours and friends who expanded the search in rain on Thursday.

Mr Wills said yesterday that with searchers having gone over 12ha of the Trelinnoe gardens several times, the hunt in improved weather spread further afield yesterday, concentrating on roadsides as far away as the Napier-Taupo highway - "both north and south".

Among those who joined yesterday's search was Mr Wills' aerial spreading contractor, Bruce Peterson, of Aerospread, and commercial helicopter pilot Rick Graham, who conducted voluntary searches from the air, and another of Mr Wills' sons, Matt, who had left his dairying in Canterbury so he could help.

"I'm very humbled," said Mr Wills, who was still mystified by the inability to find even the 30cm-high, 5-litre clear plastic jug Mrs Wills had to feed the chickens, which were in a roost barely 50 metres from the homestead.

Mr Wills said: "The only bit of the gardens we haven't seen is the bottoms of the six lakes.

"What we do know, from everything we've considered, that she is either very close, or somehow has managed to make her way far away," he said.

"It is Day 4. But miracles can happen, so we are still hopeful.

"We really do appeal to anybody who thinks they may have seen her, anywhere," Mr Wills said.