80-year-old felt ill during hike and was told to head down unescorted – then the ship left, and investigators are now trying to figure out what went wrong

An 80-year-old woman has died on an Australian island after her cruise ship accidentally left without her. Suzanne Rees from Sydney was discovered dead on Lizard Island a day after the boat sailed away.

According to ABC News, the terrible event took place last Saturday while Rees was on the second day of her trip around Australia. She got off the Coral Adventurer to go hiking with other passengers up to a mountain viewpoint. About five hours later, the ship departed and only noticed she was missing late that evening.

During the hike on what was a very hot day, Rees started feeling sick. She was told to walk back down the hill by herself. After that, the ship left the island without checking if all passengers were back on board. Somewhere in that time, Suzanne Rees died by herself.

This whole thing sounds like it could have been avoided

The next day, a search helicopter spotted her body around 50 meters away from the hiking path. It looked like she had fallen from a cliff or steep area. Her daughter Katherine is heartbroken and angry about what happened.

Katherine put out a statement saying she was shocked that the cruise company left her mother behind. She believes the company failed to take proper care of her mom and did not use basic common sense.

Katherine hopes that when officials look into what happened, they will figure out what the company should have done differently that might have kept her mother alive. Police say they do not think anything suspicious caused the death, and they have asked a coroner to investigate. Similar to how authorities investigated the cause of death for a 6-year-old who went missing from her home, investigators will work to determine exactly what happened.

The boss of Coral Expeditions, Mark Fifield, said his company is working with all the official investigations. He told the Rees family how deeply sorry they are that this happened. Fifield also said he cannot talk about details right now because the investigations are still going on.

This brings up memories of something similar that happened back in 1998. An American couple named Tom and Eileen Lonergan got left behind during a diving trip. Nobody ever found their bodies, and that tragedy made Australia take a much harder look at safety rules for tourism around the Great Barrier Reef. The devastating loss for families in such tragic circumstances highlights the importance of proper safety procedures.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority is now trying to understand why nobody noticed Rees was missing when passengers got back on the ship. A workplace safety group is also looking into the case. Nobody realized she was gone until she did not show up for dinner that evening. The ship went back to Lizard Island early the next morning.