A young British makeup artist, Madalyn Davis, 21, died after she fell off a 30-metre-high cliff in Diamond Bay Reserve in Sydney at around 6:30am on Sunday morning, according to New South Wales police.
Madalyn who is from Lincoln, UK, had recently travelled to Thailand and Bali before arriving in Australia a few weeks ago. She had been at a party on Saturday night before she and seven friends reportedly headed to the cliffs to take photos early on Sunday morning.
It’s believed that the group climbed over a security fence to sit on the edge of the rocks to watch the sunrise.
According to the Telegraph, ‘it’s unclear whether Davis took the picture herself or if one of her friends did.’
Madalyn Davis. Image: Facebook
Emergency services were contacted when her friends couldn’t find her after taking photos in the area.
Following her death, Ms Davis’s mother Rebecca Smith wrote a tribute to her daughter on social media before responding to online trolls.
She shared that Madalyn ‘was loved, she had integrity and decency.’
‘She packed more into her short years than we could possibly have hoped for. She was an inspiration to many, including us as her parents.’
Responding to ‘nasty people’ on Instagram she said ‘you are the ones that has to sleep with yourselves at night.’
According to the BBC, Ms Smith and her family were ‘so hurt by some of the comments they had started a campaign to challenge the UK government and social media companies to deal with bullying issues “more promptly and effectively”.’
In August 2019, a 27-year-old woman fell to her death posing for a photo at the same spot in Australia. Local mayor Paula Masselos said the fence height in the area at Diamond Bay Reserve had been increased and there are signs warning tourists to stay away from the edge of the cliff.
Last year, the local Waverley Council said that it was ‘considering increasing ranger patrols and installing more CCTV in the area’.
A crew from Marine Rescue Middle Harbour is involved in a search for a woman in her early 20s missing from Diamond Bay in Sydney’s east. Emergency services were alerted after a group of people taking photos inside the fence early this morning regathered & could not find the woman pic.twitter.com/Du5GCuPxTn
— Marine Rescue NSW (@MarineRescueNSW) January 11, 2020
Image: Diamond Bay Reserve/ Wikipedia Commons
