KEY POINTS:
It is 50 years since Maureen Thomas's husband mysteriously disappeared, but she never stops thinking about him.
Left with four young children and pregnant with a fifth when Patrick Fisk vanished, she had to carry on. A second happy marriage, which again left her a widow, failed to dull the memories.
An Inland Revenue inquiry officer based in Tauranga, 37-year-old Pat Fisk went on a routine assignment to the remote Murupara forestry area on December 5, 1956, and never returned.
His family believe he is dead, probably murdered.
"But until we know what happened, we cannot lay the matter to rest," says Mrs Thomas, who celebrated her 83rd birthday yesterday with her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren at her Whangaparaoa home.
"I want the answer before I die. He was my darling man, my first love ... There is no way he would have just left us without a word."
She and her children believe there are still people alive who know what happened to Pat Fisk, who is still listed officially as a missing person.
His departmental car, a 1954 blue-grey Vauxhall, was found undamaged in a clearing off the road bordering the rugged Ureweras. The area known as "The Summit" - the top of the pass between Te Whaiti and Ruatahuna - was the sort of peaceful spot he habitually stopped at for lunch on his travels.
The sandwiches his wife packed for him were open on the seat, and on the floor of the car was a Thermos and a cup three-quarters filled with tea.
Work files were scattered over the back and front seats. The driver's door was open and the petrol tank half full, but the keys were missing. There was no sign of a struggle.
Pat Fisk was born in England and joined the Punjab police at 19, serving on the Northwest Frontier in India, where he rose to superintendent.
At 23, he married 19-year-old Maureen Carpendale, daughter of a lieutenant-colonel in the Indian Army. With Indian independence looming, they moved to England but found it "grey and depressed" and decided to emigrate to New Zealand.
But after a year waiting for passage on a ship, an impatient Mr Fisk used £3000 from his police pension to buy an 11m yacht, the Debonair. He had never sailed a boat before and did a 10-day course in navigation and seamanship.
Robin was 4 and Caroline 2 in 1949, when they set off on a voyage that was to take 17 months. Mrs Thomas has published a book, Who Knows Where ..., which tells of their adventures.
They landed in Tauranga in November 1950 and at first lived on the boat while Mr Fisk worked on the wharf before joining the Inland Revenue Department. In May 1955 he was appointed to the new post of inquiry officer, finding defaulting taxpayers.
By then two more children - Linda and Timothy - had arrived and they bought 2ha of overgrown land at Oropi, 10km from Tauranga.
About every six weeks, Pat Fisk visited outlying districts for a night or two and his wife occasionally went too when a babysitter was available.
It was payday when he left in that first week of December 1956 but he didn't bother to collect his cash wages.
The last known sighting and conversation with him was about midday on December 5 at the Pekepeke Quarry in the forest near Murupara.
A man he interviewed about a tax matter told police Mr Fisk had introduced the subject of ring-bolting - a slang term for stowing away. Tauranga was then regarded as one of the easiest ports from which to leave illegally.
Mr Fisk, the former policeman who still enjoyed investigating, had told his wife a few months earlier that he was on the trail of criminals and tax evaders fleeing the country. But he still had some checking to do before passing his information on.
Mrs Thomas dismisses suggestions that he stowed away himself. Why would he do that, or go all the way to the Ureweras to stage an elaborate disappearance when he had an oceangoing yacht at Tauranga, she asks.
Other rumours had the missing man killed in a deliberate explosion at the quarry, leaving him covered by rocks. Another had him picked up, with two suitcases, by a woman from the place where his car was found.
"If he had wanted to leave us, he would never have done it like that, with no word of explanation," Mrs Thomas says. "He was a totally straight, honest, dependable and responsible person."
Eldest daughter Caroline Fisk, a scientist who has found many flaws in the original investigation, intends to carry on seeking answers although the police files have been lost in a fire.
Aged 10 when her father vanished, she remembers: "We always felt he was just lost in the bush. It was a gradual realisation that he wasn't coming back. We never sort of came to grips with it really."
- NZPA
