When the head of Tuggeranong Police Station, Rod Anderson, heard a 74-year-old was nowhere to be found, he didn't waste any time.
Leopold Hungsberg's wife reported him missing at around 6pm on Wednesday night. She had not seen him since about 4pm that afternoon.
Mr Hungsberg was likely to have gone walking near Kambah pool in the Burren Range Nature Reserve, his wife said.
The area was well-known to police from previous search and rescues. It's dense bushland with steep cliffs and an unpredictable body of water.
In a missing person's report, police described Mr Hungsberg as fluent in German and speaking English as a second language. He was "known to have medical conditions and may appear disorientated".
His last known location was the cattle grate on Kambah Pool road, they said.
By 7pm a search had began.
For 16 hours, a team of 30 anonymous Canberrans would work together to try and find a missing man in tough terrain and wet weather.
Ultimately, people from Tuggeranong Police Station, Rural Patrol, AFP Search and Rescue, ACT Emergency Services, ACT Rural Fire Service, the SES, Toll Rescue helicopter, and Parks and Conservation would be involved in the search. Half were volunteers.
But some of the first soldiers in this hunt weren't even human at all, Officer in Charge of Tuggeranong Police Station Inspector Rod Anderson revealed.
"[As] patrols went out and started searching, we used our drone technology," he said.
This "FLIR" drone is a thermographic camera with a forward-looking infrared radar, which picks up heat sources.
"It was able to guide our members to specific locations to check out," Mr Anderson said.
Mr Hungsberg was also wearing a medical alert watch, which was tracked until it went out of range.
Police and others were able to search until Thursday at around 2am, with rain and temperatures dropping to 1.3C in Canberra that night.
"We never stopped our investigations," Mr Anderson said.
"We suspended the ground search part of it during those early hours in the morning but we also put out information through media releases, through the hotline, checked with hospitals, taxis and buses."
A few hours later in the early morning, Mr Anderson said the search team had grown substantially.
"State Emergency Service, rural fire service. We had our road policing members out on trail bikes, we had the TOLL rescue helicopter with ambulance paramedics on board and rangers from Parks and Conservation," he said.
Rangers opened gates, and provided information about the Murrumbidgee River Corridor and walking tracks.
Searchers needed all the information they could get to navigate the difficult terrain.
"There's a lot of weeds and blackberries, really thick undergrowth, as well as it being quite rocky and there's a few cliffs in the area," Mr Anderson said.
Time was of the essence, with the missing man known to have a medical condition and to have spent overnight in the bush in terrible weather.
"He'd been out overnight it pretty cold conditions, and it had rained," Mr Anderson said.
"He probably didn't have any clothing that was suitable for keeping warm overnight.
"So we were really concerned about his welfare."
Finally, many hours after originally searching, the TOLL Helicopter found someone 1.8 kilometers north of Kambah pool. The pilot guided the SES to the location. It was Mr Hungsberg.
At around 11am, a paramedic was dropped down on a winch line to assess his condition. He was alive.
"They decided that given his conditions and where they were, they would winch him back into the aircraft with the patient and take him to Canberra Hospital," Mr Anderson said.
Mr Hungsberg had spent up to 19 hours outside, sleeping overnight in the bush in the wet and cold rain with clothing not at all suitable for the weather, Mr Anderson said.
But he was "surprisingly in good spirits and quite fit and well, considering".
Mr Hungsberg was taken to hospital for observations, but soon returned home. The search was finished.
"Everybody was really relieved and happy that we located him safe and well," Mr Anderson said.
"Given his age and condition and the weather conditions at the time, and the terrain, the outcome could have been a lot worse."
For Mr Anderson, who has been a police officer for around three decades, the result shows how effective the relationship between emergency service agencies are.
"The SES, RFS, the TOLL rescue helicopter, the police, and the different areas within the police all worked together really effectively," he said.
"It's a really good example of how well all our different emergency services can work together for something like this. And this is the result, the successful result, where nobody's been injured or killed."
In September, The Canberra Times followed Mr Anderson, ACT police and emergency services in a mock search which strangely closely resembled the real one they conducted last week.
Fake 50-year-old Bill Townsend was bushwalking and looking for the Namadgi wasp when he went missing. Many of the same agencies were called to assist.
Both in real-life and in the simulation, many rescuers were volunteers.
"There's a large number of volunteers who dedicate [themselves], time and time again, to protecting the Canberra community and these people don't get paid for it, they do it because they want to protect the community. Just incredible," Mr Anderson said.
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