Woman who disappeared on Nias in 1976 surprises audience at surf-film premiere

Ingrid LeFebour, who vanished from the Indonesian island of Nias in 1976 and was long presumed dead by some, attended the first screening of the film Point of Change in Fremantle last month. LeFebour, then an 18-year-old backpacker, had travelled to the island with her boyfriend to surf Lagundri Bay.

When malaria struck the camp she became gravely ill, and the last others saw of her she was being carried on a stretcher atop a truck leaving the village. Rumours later circulated that she had been killed by local headhunters and that her remains were hidden in a bridge foundation.

Those accounts emerged again when filmmaker Rebecca Coley investigated the changes at Lagundri for Point of Change, a film about the arrival of foreign surfers in the 1970s and the effects on the local community. Coley says she tried to locate LeFebour from 2016 onwards, contacting missing-persons services and searching online, but could not find her without a full name.

Footage of LeFebour and local witnesses prompted further digging while making the film. LeFebour told the filmmakers she was delirious with fever in Nias, was carried to a nearby village and placed in a clinic morgue where she later woke up alive. She wrapped a mortuary sheet around herself, pushed through flimsy doors and crawled out, later finding someone who helped her.

Key Topics

Health, Culture, Surfing, Indonesia, Point Of Change, Missing Person, Nias