Police have found the body of Leonard Watkinson on his Yass property. "They've all said, we don't believe in aliens but it must be aliens, because he has just vanished. Just disappeared. There is no trace," Lynn said, the satellite receiver he ordered now sitting on their dining table. The retired couple have been together for 18 years. Leonard does not have kids, but Lynn never doubted his love for her two children and three grandchildren. "Len was very happy to be a grandfather without having to had been a father," she said. "He idolised the kids, the kids idolised him, he was Poppy Len." Everything was normal the morning he went missing, Lynn said. She was using the pump at the big dam to fill the "water cart" and making trips to water her garden and raspberry patch, and Leonard was using a brush cutter to trim the long grass around the pump. The weather was warming up, and there would be snakes around soon. The couple arranged as they always did to meet for lunch back at the barn. But when Lynn arrived about 1pm, Leonard wasn't there. She looked for him, and finding it odd she couldn't find him called his phone – the property has good reception and they always carried their mobiles while out and about. It rang out to a "caller unavailable" message, and she would later discover his keys and phone in the workshop.

Leonard Watkinson with his little sister Kate O'Brien in 1995. The brush cutter and his safety helmet had been returned to where they normally lived in the barn. His wallet was still in the car. At about 4pm – and roughly six hours since she'd seen Leonard – Lynn called the neighbours who came and helped her look until one suggested they needed more help. That afternoon, teams of police and SES arrived with a PolAir helicopter. The family became convinced there had been an accident and Leonard had fallen in the dam. But the next day police divers spent hours looking for Leonard in the five dams, the biggest of which is about five metres deep in the middle and the size of a "couple olympic swimming pools" and found nothing. Police brought in a dog unit to help search the property, and Lynn's brother later searched the dam with his fishing boat and its sonar fish finder. The search expanded into the Mundoonen Nature Reserve that backs onto the Reardons Road property, but Kate said it was unlikely he'd wandered off. "Lenny was a lazy bugger, he wouldn't walk if he could avoid it. If he needed to go to the bathroom he'd use the bike." Police searched it anyway, bringing their own trail bikes to cover more ground.

Leonard hadn't jumped on his own bike either. Every car and vehicle at the property were accounted for. And police divers searched the big dam a third time last week with a more sensitive sonar brought in from Sydney, just to be sure. Police have expanded the physical search beyond the property and the reserve, and are performing electronic searches for any trace of Leonard or where he might be. The officer in charge of the case, Detective Inspector Chad Gillies, has grave concerns for Leonard's welfare and said police efforts were now organised into Strikeforce Riverleigh. "The suggestion that he has had enough of the world and decided to lose himself really just flies in our faces," Kate said. He is mentally and physically fit, and kept in contact with friends and family, including his mother who still lived in Canberra, she said. "That's another reason why we don't think he'd disappear. We only lost dad three years ago and we all took it pretty hard. He wouldn't put mum through a trauma again."

Anyone with information about Leonard can contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or at www.crimestoppers.com.au.