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It is very unlikely missing Sydney fraudster Melissa Caddick cut off her own foot before it washed up on a remote beach, experts say.

Caddick, 49, vanished from her home in the upmarket suburb of Dover Heights in November 2020, just hours after being raided by investigators from the corporate watchdog ASIC.

In February 2021 her partial remains – a foot still inside an Asics shoe – were discovered in Bournda National Park near Tathra by teenagers on a camping trip about 400 kilometres from Sydney.

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Speaking to the podcast Liar Liar: Melissa Caddick and the Missing Millions, by the Sydney Morning Herald and 60 Minutes, Moninya Roughan, a professor of oceanography at the University of NSW, said it was entirely possible the tide carried the shoe.

"Having looked at the ocean circulation that occurred through November through February … and having looked at the drifters that we deployed at the same time", Caddick's shoe washing up so far south "is well within the realm of possibility", Roughan told the podcast.

In a strange coincidence, around the time Caddick vanished, Roughan and her team had been conducting an experiment tracking how the ocean would carry biodegradable drifters.

These three items were roughly the same size as a shoe and were fitted with satellite tracking devices.

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They were released from Port Stephens, about 150 kilometres north of Sydney, and one washed up about 250 kilometres south at Jervis Bay.

In British Columbia, at least 21 feet have washed up on a specific stretch of the Canadian coast since 2007 – but so far investigators have ruled out foul play.

Matthew Orde, a forensic pathologist with the University of British Columbia, said the phenomenon was in part due to innovations in the design of running shoes.

"Over the recent years, they have become more and more advanced in their design and construction, and many of them contain pockets of air filter bubbles in the soles, which make the shoe more buoyant," he told the podcast.

Earlier this month, Caddick's husband Anthony Koletti was evicted from their five-bedroom mansion after it was possessed by liquidators Jones Partners.

Koletti had been living at the Dover Heights home rent-free since Caddick's disappearance.

Jones Partners said it would now be preparing to put the house on the market and engage a real estate agent.

Days after the election, "disenfranchised" Australian voters all over the world are fuming as their chances of making their voices heard slip further away.

Citing the pandemic, the Australian Electoral Commission slashed the number of embassies offering in-person voting this year, from more than 100 down to just 19, sparking widespread concerns postal systems wouldn't be able to cope.

For some, such as Dublin-based software engineer Adrian Hempel, those concerns were well-founded.

Three years ago, just like tens of thousands of Australians in capital cities around the world, the 46-year-old headed into his local embassy to cast his vote.

But this year his only options were to apply for a postal vote or fly abroad to London, the closest embassy offering in-person voting.

Election day came and went with no sign of the ballot Hempel said he had been assured was lodged with Australia Post weeks earlier.

"I'm very upset. The practical implication of it is that I've been disenfranchised this election," the Sydney electorate voter told 9News.com.au.

Hempel said he called the AEC three times in the lead-up to polling day and confirmed the ballot papers had been sent to the correct address.

"I felt like I wasn't a part of it," he said, of election night itself.

"It was a really important election to me and while my vote on its own may have only played a very small part, I'm hearing from a lot of other Australians overseas that they've had a similar experience.

"So it has me thinking that together we could have had some impact on the result."

Australians have until June 3 to get their postal votes in but Hempel and other electors who spoke to 9News.com.au have little faith in their ballots arriving in time to be returned to Australia by the deadline.

Overseas voting dependent on COVID-19 situation

For its part, the AEC said it had been working closely with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to determine what voting options could be offered in each country.

A spokesperson told 9News.com.au in-person voting availability was based on local health restrictions and environments, including a safe workplace for DFAT staff.

The commission used courier services to send the ballots in some cases — DHL according to many overseas voters — but voters weren't sent tracking numbers along with their confirmations.

Overseas citizens could also return their ballots directly to embassies — even those not offering in-person voting — to be sent back to Australia via diplomatic mail.

But none of that was any comfort to Allison Bradwell in Malaysia, who said she was still waiting on her postal vote package even though her husband had received his.

Nor to insurance workers Jay and Jon Harwood, whose year-long trip was interrupted by the pandemic, keeping them in Nicaragua for 18 months instead of the three weeks they had planned.

Still smarting from the lack of assistance offered to Australians stranded overseas during the pandemic, Ms Harwood said they were now reconsidering "whether we want Australia to be our permanent home".

They were a long way from an embassy on election day, enjoying an island off the Croatian coast, but didn't even have the option of travelling to the capital of Zagreb, where in-person voting was available in 2019, to cast their ballot.

Instead, Ms Harwood said the Bucket List Travellers vloggers applied for postal ballots that arrived days after they'd left where they were staying.

"That was quite frustrating for us because, you know, we are quite active voters," the Warringah voter said, from Albania. 

"We didn't like the thought of being disenfranchised, and you know, not having our say. 

"So, yeah, it was disappointing that we weren't given the opportunity to vote and we did try our best."

Shayne Evans, who runs the Australians in LA Facebook group, said she had no problems receiving her ballot but "plenty" of fellow group members were still waiting.

"It seems to be a but hit and miss with people across the USA who received them and who didn't," she said.

"My neighbour is an Australian Expat as well. I received my papers but she didn't receive hers."

In an unscientific Facebook poll on Thursday, 26 group members received their ballots before the election, 12 after the election and 11 were still waiting.

Tens of thousands of overseas voters potentially impacted

More than 60,000 Australians voted overseas in 2019 and just 1128 of them cast postal votes, according to the AEC's figures. 

About a third of those electors cast their votes in Aussie hubs such as London, New York, Berlin, Paris and Ho Chi Minh City and San Francisco, which all maintained in-person voting this year.

But Hong Kong, Singapore, Vancouver, Tokyo and Kuala Lumpur — where more than 10,000 people voted all up in 2019 — were all restricted to postal-only voting this year, along with most European capitals.

The AEC is yet to publish overseas voting figures from this year but said it expected a "greatly reduced number of overseas voters" compared to 2019. 

"Given the impact of COVID most Australians overseas will be residents, rather than travellers, meaning a postal service is accessible for them," the spokesperson said, adding that about 45,000 postal vote applications had been made by Australians overseas by the end of April.

'It was either calculated and inept, or inept'

But that wasn't the case for Melbourne-based TV producer Karyn Wood, who was upset to realise her pre-booked European holiday began before pre-poll voting opened in Australia and kept her away from home over election day.

She was walking the Caminho Português from Porto to Santiago de Compostela in the west of Spain this month, making receiving a postal vote almost impossible.

But the mother-of-two went to heroic lengths anyway. Wood said she several conversations with the AEC before eventually nominating a hostel on the border of Portugal and Spain to receive her ballot, only to arrive and find it had closed during the pandemic.

"I think that it [the dramatic reduction in in-person overseas voting] along with reducing the amount of time within which you could pre-poll was calculated," she said, admitting her own "amusing" difficulties voting were hard to fully blame the AEC for. 

"It was either calculated and inept, or inept. I mean we've been voting in all of those embassies and doing pre-polling for years."

The AEC spokesperson said individual accounts were not representative of the postal voting service as a whole.

"Suggestions of 'nefarious' or 'calculated' decisions made to apparently reduce the service are of course incorrect," they said.

"Running electoral services in numerous locations overseas takes surety around staff, materials and logistics. It cannot be turned on overnight meaning that decisions on particular cities had to be made early. 

"The potential to promise an in-person service only to potentially have to take it away on short notice was also a factor in decision making as this would have left people with no options."

Many voters who spoke to 9News.com.au felt this wasn't good enough.

"Two years into a pandemic the government should have a workaround for stuff like this," Ms Harwood said. 

"It's not like they haven't had lead time they've had sufficient time to be able to organise alternatives."

Even among those who did receive their ballot before election day, such as holidaying English professor Sarah Gleeson-White, there was frustration at not being able to vote in-person at the nearest embassy.

"My sense is COVID is being used as an excuse, a justification," she said.

"I can hardly imagine hordes turning up to vote, and we manage significant crowds in other settings—why not to vote?

"As I say, shameful."

The new owner of a controversial statue of Captain Cook in Cairns promises "it will stand again" after it came close to being bulldozed.

The 10-metre statue has loomed over Sheridan St in Cairns for half a century, recently drawing more widespread attention both as a symbol of Australia's colonial past, and for its pose.

The Cook figure had one arm outstretched, which prompted some comparisons to a Nazi salute.

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But new owner Martin Anton – who snapped up the statue for $1 – dismissed the recent controversy, saying he felt it had been partly whipped up by the media.

"It's just good that it's in the right hands, that's what I'm happy about," he told the Today Show.

He said the statue was an "icon", and that while he respected the opinions of people who disagreed with him, he felt "95 per cent" of the Cairns population would be happy to see it saved.

READ MORE: Police reveal key theories behind Aussie mum's shock disappearance

"A lot of people unfortunately don't understand history or have been taught history," he said.

The statue is in good condition at a new site, though it is currently missing its arm.

"Everybody's got a story about Captain Cook," Anton said.

READ MORE: Football fans filmed brawling following AFL game in Melbourne

"It's larger than life in more ways that not."

The statue's future is not yet set in stone, but Anton said that would be "chapter two".

No shots were fired at a New York City indoor sports arena during a disturbance that sent people, including tennis star Naomi Osaka, running for their lives early Sunday, said the New York City Police Department.

"After investigating the incident at the Barclays Center this morning, we determined that no shots were fired," the NYPD 78th Precinct, which serves the Park Slope section of Brooklyn, said in a tweet on Sunday.

An NYPD spokesman told CNN there was a "sound disturbance" at the indoor arena that people mistook for gunfire.

Ten people suffered minor injuries and were sent to hospitals, said police.

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The disturbance followed a boxing match between Devonte Davis and Rolando Romero at the centre, and comes as the nation remains on edge following recent mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas.

Osaka, who was at the event, said she was "petrified" when she saw the commotion.

"I was just in the Barclays Center and suddenly I heard shouting and saw people running, then we were being yelled at that there was an active shooter and we had to huddle in a room and close the doors," Osaka said on Twitter.

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In a follow-up tweet, the four-time tennis Grand Slam champion said: "I really hope everyone made it out safely, since I'm tweeting this we made it out ok."

NYPD Detective Adam Navarro told CNN in a phone call that there was no shooting at the Barclays Center.

Rather, Navarro said, it was a "sound disturbance" that caused people to panic and run.

Football fans have been captured brawling on a Melbourne road following an AFL game at the MCG on Sunday evening.

The incident comes a week after a man was bashed with a didgeridoo, police were bitten and punched and 50 wild fans were ejected from the MCG following another AFL game.

Several witnesses called police to the intersection of Punt Road and Wellington Street in Richmond about 7.30pm yesterday as a group of six men, wearing AFL jumpers, fought in the middle of the road.

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One witness captured footage of the brawl, showing one man on the ground being kicked and punched in the head several times.

Police have said officers went to the scene and spoke to a number of men in the area and patrolled nearby streets but were unable to find a victim.

They are yet to receive a formal report of an assault but are calling for anyone who was involved and or anyone who may have been injured to contact police.