Community members are invited to come together to remember and mourn Toyah Cordingley on October 21, the sixth anniversary of her death.

The ceremony will take place at Toyah’s memorial near Wangetti Beach at around 3.00pm.

Wayne “Prong” Trimble, family friend of Toyah, said people were welcome throughout the day to pay their respects, and at any time.

“People stop by her memorial all the time,” he said. There’s a path from the memorial to the beach and people will pick up a stone or a shell from the beach and place it on her shrine.

“I was out there last weekend and there were about 15 people there, stopping to have a look. She’s not forgotten.”

Prong and friends Cameron and Guppy visited the memorial recently to whipper snip, paint rocks and tidy up ahead of the anniversary, and were joined by Toyah’s mother, Vanessa Gardiner.

“She hadn’t been to the memorial for around five years,” he said. “She got right into it, moving the toys and trinkets and tidying it up.”

“She wouldn’t throw anything away, because everything there means something to someone.”

Asked whether Vanessa had a message for the community, Prong said she wanted to pass on her thanks to the community for their support. 

“The family cannot express themselves enough on what the community has done,” he said.

“I stopped counting how many bumper stickers were printed at 500,000, there were 60 printers across Australia printing them, it even went international – 5,000 were printed in Arizona – Arizona! – and when they ran out, they did another 5000.

Prong said the words “The community will never give up”, which appears on the stickers, posters and banners which can be seen across Far North Queensland and beyond, were inspired by the commitment of volunteers who searched for evidence after the police investigation of the crime scene was complete.

“After the police had wrapped up their work at the crime scene, I organised a community search – just to see whether we could find anything useful,” he said. 

“Around 1000 people turned up, it was 8 am and a hot day. After a long search, we gathered outside Hartley’s Crocodile Farm. A mob of people from a motorcycle club had turned up, put up tents and were handing out water – we were dying of thirst. 

At this point I said to the volunteers, ‘there are two more places we could search, but it’s hot and I’m not up to it and I’m sure you feel the same,’ then someone stood up and said, ‘Prong, we’re not giving up, c’mon we can do this,’ then more people stood up and said, ‘we’re not giving up,’ and that’s how we came up with the words.”

Prong said he would attend Toyah’s memorial this year, as he has done every year since her death in 2018, but it was unlikely Vaness would attend. He also intends to attend the trial of Toyah’s accused killer Rajwinder Singh which will begin on 25 February 2025.