It was not difficult to speculate, however, how the instrument, which is believed to have credit cards lodged within its casing, might have come to be in the dam.
Whoever wished to be rid of the phone needed only to pull up on the side of the road and toss it over the roadside fence.
It may have stayed there, under water and beyond discovery, if Victoria’s Western District had not experienced a relatively dry period. The dam’s water level has receded over the months. The phone was found lodged in mud near the water’s edge.
Divers discovered nothing more in the small dam, and police were gone from the site on Thursday, having declared they would be issuing no statements for the time being. No one was answering the gate outside the Murphy family home at East Ballarat, either.
Only media cars and their occupants lined the dam site on the Buninyong-Mount Mercer Road.
A chill wind blew across the undulating farming landscape not far from high forested country that was combed fruitlessly by searchers in the early days of Samantha Murphy’s disappearance.
Rain began to fall at 2.30pm on Thursday. Could the only clue to Murphy’s fate have disappeared beneath the water again if it had not been found on Wednesday?
Until now, the scarce pointers to Murphy’s disappearance seemed as insubstantial as the thin air into which she seemed to have vanished.
She was captured by CCTV in running gear outside her home about 7am on February 4, having told her family she was setting off on a morning jog.
Loading
Since then, the only publicly revealed lead was that her mobile phone had “pinged” on a communications tower close to Buninyong in the immediate period since her disappearance.
But in the absence of other towers from which the “ping” could be triangulated, the whereabouts of the phone could not be ascertained beyond the general area of Buninyong and district.
And now, all these long weeks later, the Murphy family, their friends and the hundreds of community members who have never given up searching, can only wait. This time, with some hope.
A Ballarat district man, Patrick Orren Stephenson, 22, has been charged with murder over Murphy’s disappearance. He remains in custody awaiting a court appearance in August.
Get the day’s breaking news, entertainment ideas and a long read to enjoy. Sign up to receive our Evening Edition newsletter here.