Missing Gary Tweddle Book Part 13 – INTRODUCTION: GARY TWEDDLE

May 3, 2025

2. Introduction

Mr Gary Tweddle’s unexplained disappearance in the winter of 2013 sparked the largest search for a missing person in Blue Mountains history…well at least to date at the time.

Hereon, this author through this article, since web-book, chooses to refer to Mr Gary Lloyd Tweddle, more familiarly just be his first name ‘Gary’. Few these days ever use their full name in normal parlance, and one is not a reporting journalist.

Rather, over the years since 2013 this author has collected relevant research about this local Blue Mountains tragedy and then during recent months drafting this web-book, one has grown to become somewhat familiar with this subject.

This author is sensitive to his family, loved ones and friends abut what is written who may one day read this and connect with the very personal story that it is; quite different to reading some coroner’s cold and disconnected legal report. So we take liberty by this approach. It is about the truth warts and all. In some limited way, the truth is a salvation. Others go missing and are never found, so doubt lingers forever for many.

This article is particularly a credit to the more than one thousand Blue Mountains locals (officials, along with volunteering ordinary folk who cared) who tried to find and save Gary not knowing him or where he had gone and under extreme mountainous wintry conditions. It’s just what good Samaritans do.

Their dedicated efforts are part of this story, and since the real truth has not before been disclosed officially, the author in hindsight after the research discoveries, considers each rescuer deserves to know what really happened and so like Gary’s family, loved ones and friends, seek some sort of closure.

But Gary will never be forgotten.

Gary photographed here happy on Sydney Harbour in front of perhaps what looks like The Sydney-Hobart Classic Yacht Regatta out of Rushcutters Bay, pre-Race in December 2012 – clearly in summer). [Note: This author was manager of Poweryacht Marine Services at D’Albora Marinas at Rushcutters Bay in 1998 – yes, at the time of that dreadful year for the Sydney-to-Hobart].

Gary’s disappearance story begins with a backstory about this young, smart and ambitious man from England who had gained skills and experience in information technology (IT) in London. Gary Tweddle was a London lad from Reading in the home county of Berkshire.

Having likely graduated in IT there, he was likely attracted to the finance district of The City in London, England. His family will know. By age 23, Gary had managed to secure a career job opportunity working abroad in Australia in corporate IT in Sydney as a young computer salesman for U.S. global software giant Oracle Corporation; at the time the third largest in the world.

Gary departed the UK by himself. His father David Tweddle remained living in their home town of Reading and worked as vice-president with Oracle in London. Media reports reveal that his mother had divorced his father and was due to remarry to her new partner, ‘Clive’ in Australia. So, with his mother based in Australia, Gary would have had an additional incentive to go to Australia.

Gary was originally from Reading in Greater London, and he had emigrated to Australia with his mother in June 2005 at the age of fifteen. He lived by himself in a rented flat in Sydney’s Northshore suburb of Cremorne and worked as a sales consultant with American multinational computer technology corporation Oracle Corporation in nearby North Ryde.

Gary had been invited to the company retreat at the Fairmont Resort after being marked as a “high achiever”.

Gary was just 8 years old when his parents divorced. His mother, Carol Streatfield, who also lives in Australia, had previously flown to the Blue Mountains to join the search for her son. She said the phone call from her son’s partner, Anika, telling her that he was missing was the first step in the most “heartbreaking journey” of her life.

Gary’s father David, a vice-president with Oracle which his son worked for, personally flew out to Australia from his home in Berkshire in England in the first week of Gary going missing to help with the search effort.

Also, Gary’s mother Carol Streatfield stated publicly:

“Gary was to give me away that morning and this decision was difficult to come to, however made easy by the fact that Gary was adamant that after 15 years we tie the knot. It was a day full of emotions with a common theme – love and hope for Gary, for us and for our family. Gary was the most positive person I know. Today he would say to me: ‘Just get on with it, mother’, and so I will. I remain as positive as ever as Gary would want me to. I just want my beautiful boy back. There is always love and hope and it is these two things that I will hold on to, always.”

In a statement issued by the Foreign Office last month, Gary’s mother said:

“On the mountain my days were filled with sirens, noise, searching, tireless walking and door-knocking.

I repeatedly followed the track I believed he had taken in the hopes of finding a clue. Every pole and tree were covered with his beautiful face. However, it was on a piece of A4 paper with a ‘missing’ heading.

At one point I was so exhausted I found a bench to sit on in the middle of a bush track, and as I sat down there to the left of me was Gary’s photo. It was a small comfort as I stroked his face, kissed him and told him how much I loved him and that I will never give up trying to find him, ever.”

Carol Streatfield was due to marry her new partner, Clive in what she described as an..

“intimate celebration of our family unity. Gary was to give me away that morning and this decision was difficult to come to, however made easy by the fact that Gary was adamant that after 15 years we tie the knot. It was a day full of emotions with a common theme – love and hope for Gary, for us and for our family. Gary was the most positive person I know. Today he would say to me: ‘Just get on with it, mother’, and so I will. I remain as positive as ever as Gary would want me to. I just want my beautiful boy back. There is always love and hope and it is these two things that I will hold on to, always.”

Clearly, Carol was very close to her son Gary. Gary’s upbringing seemed problematic and perhaps lacking parental direction at a critical impressionable time in his childhood.

Young Gary was certainly clever, yet still very young in a corporate sales perspective, so perhaps naive yet keep to prove himself. Presumably thanks to his father’s internal connections within Oracle, Gary landed a junior sales role with Oracle in Sydney Australia being on the other side of the world from London.

This is all according to media reports. We point out in advance that us having researched online the many media accounts, some information is contradictory and subsequent accounts have revealed that what was initially reported early on has since proven to be incorrect. This includes where Gary was last seen, heard from, what he was wearing, where those connected to him lived, witness accounts, etc. Also, over the months following Gary’s disappearance, new information came forward, but then also much information has been omitted.

We put this down to the lack of central record keeping by the police search command with detective investigation and the reporting that (one version of the known truth) by way of centrally controlled press releases to the media. Some of the media reports were lazy copy/paste plagiarism of other media stories, some making unfounded assumptions. There was no indication that there was any experienced investigative journalist dedicated to this missing person story, yet that very story evolved into a number of larger thematic side stories:

The largest missing person search in Blue Mountains history
A misguided search and rescue effort
Another death by misadventure in the Blue Mountains
A complex family backstory
Oracle sales stressful corporate culture
Poor police methodology
NSW Coroner’s Court lack of inquest and public transparency failures
Narcotic use, and criminal dealing
Sydney’s rampant cocaine scene.

The Gary Tweddle case ended up having broader implications. With the benefit of hindsight, this would have been gold for investigative journalism like ABC’s Four Corners.

This story centres around Oracle Corporation Australia, missing person Gary’s employer.

Oracle Corporation’s Australian office at Stockland’s corporate North Ryde business park on Sydney’s exclusive North Shore.

Sales Executive Gary Tweddle with his girlfriend Anika Haigh at an Oracle Corporation staff party in Sydney, circa 2012-2013. May be the concerned bloke in the background had wisened up to know the reality of what to expect in Oracle sales management? Note: Gary is wearing glasses and NOT for reading!

At the time in 2013, Gary had rented a flat in Sydney’s wealthy lower North Shore leafy precinct in the suburb of Cremorne. This location providing him with a convenient 11 km commute to work to Oracle’s Australia Headquarters located at 4 Julius Ave, North Ryde NSW 2113 via the M2 toll motorway.

Renting in Cremorne also positioned Gary in a plush elite suburb and convenient to Sydney’s appealing harbour-waterfront lifestyle and to Sydney’s CBD nearby.

Gary Tweddle (left – note no ‘nerdy’ glasses in front of his colleagues) shown partying with his Oracle work mates – clearly they all get on as mates. Perhaps at his Cremorne flat in Sydney before they headed out on the town. [Photo taken well before Oracle’s Sales Conference in the Blue Mountains].

Young people like Gary and his work mates naturally seek fun and excitement and many party frequently, especially the more exuberant personalities. They are predisposed to take more risks than older folks – their natural youth, fitness and boundless energy convincing them that they are pretty much bulletproof.

Regrettably, some seek high-risk pursuits and are more inclined to be influenced by their mates. Youth risk aversion and propensity for fun (at any cost) can mean taking risks like experimenting with narcotics. The media reports at the time connected Gary with narcotics, but this revelation took some weeks to be revealed publicly from Gary’s co-workers following Gary’s sudden disappearance.

Narcotic drug use can be associated with a response to uncontrollable anxiety. Workplace stress such as a high pressure sales performance expectation culture can inculcate feelings of inadequacy and this can urge one to turn to coping mechanisms, like such substance abuse.

But was Gary using drugs?

At the time of his disappearance this was not publicised. Police were just starting to investigate his sudden and unexplained disappearance, and the media reporting early on was not aware.