Gus has been gone for 63 days, and searches of mines, dams and scrub have yielded no clues
The words “mine shaft” make a chilling companion to the term “missing person” — to know that shafts are being searched for the missing is to confront an almost unbearably grim reality.
In the outback this week, the sombre task of inspecting historical diggings for any sign of a vanished boy fell to South Australian police.
For the past 63 days, they have been trying to shed light on the whereabouts of four-year-old Gus Lamont in a part of the world that can be austere and forbidding.
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The landscape around Yunta in outback SA in the region where Gus went missing. (ABC News: Guido Salazar)
Gus’s disappearance on September 27 from his family’s homestead south of Yunta in remote South Australia has caused shock and sorrow across the state, as well as the nation.
It has also prompted harrowing comparisons — including with the most notorious of all of Australia’s missing children, the Beaumonts, who were last seen in the Adelaide beachside suburb of Glenelg almost 60 years ago.
“We’ve had those other cases in the past, like the Beaumonts, that remain unsolved, and I think the memories of that live with South Australians,” SA Police Minister Blair Boyer said on Wednesday.
“The disappearance of Gus reminds them of things like that.”
The Beaumont children, pictured at the Twelve Apostles, disappeared from Glenelg on Australia Day, 1966. (Supplied: SA Police)
While police have reiterated that they have not uncovered any evidence of foul play, early in the search detectives committed to leaving “no stone unturned”.
It is a promise that has now, in a sense, achieved a degree of literal fulfilment.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, police descended on — as well as into — the stony ground of six mine sites up to 12 kilometres from Gus’s home.
One of the shafts searched by police. (Supplied: SA Police)
Even if they were sceptical about the likelihood of such a small boy having wandered such a distance, they said they needed to “eliminate all potential areas” from their enquiries.
“In something as tragic as these circumstances … it’s still absolutely a path we need to go down just to ensure we’ve crossed every ‘t’ and dotted every ‘i’,” Assistant Commissioner Philip Newitt told the ABC during the week.
That search was hardly an isolated endeavour — and was the fourth throughout the property in the past nine weeks.
A helicopter flies above the search area during the initial phase. (ABC News: Daniel Taylor)
It would not be an overstatement to say that with each new phase comes new hardship.
“It’s a terrible situation, but I’m confident that SAPOL are doing everything they can to try to find him, and to follow up new leads, if and when they come to light,” Mr Boyer said.
“This is a nightmare situation for the family here — but also all South Australians, I think, are riding that with Gus’s family.”
In mid-October, after an initial 10-day effort, searchers focused on an area with a 5.5 kilometre radius surrounding the homestead. (ABC News: Stephan Hammat)
Experts in missing persons cases have warned that, from a public point of view, the emotional strain could intensify with each passing day.
Searching the shafts
The town of Yunta sits on the Barrier Highway — the road corridor that connects northern South Australia with western New South Wales.
The region has sometimes been described as South Australia’s “mid north”, but the land has little in common with the verdant vineyards of the Clare Valley that are perhaps more likely to be evoked by that name.
The landscape north of Yunta includes the ghost town Waukaringa and old mine sites. (ABC News: Guido Salazar)
Instead, the country that encompasses Yunta wouldn’t be out of place in a Hollywood western: it is arid, hilly, dusty and scrubby, and is dotted with the remnants of gold rushes of yore.
To the north of Yunta is the ghost town of Waukaringa, which was described in its early days as a “flourishing little township” but is today little more than ruins.
Not far from the stone shell of what was once a sizeable outback hotel is a chimney stack that was part of the Alma and Victoria gold mines, and towers above a hillside.
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The ruins of the Alma and Victoria gold mine at Waukaringa north of Yunta. (ABC News: Guido Salazar)
Further south, closer to Gus’s home, is an old copper deposit called “Wheal Motley” — a name that is at least partly Cornish, and likely derives from the miners who, in the 19th century, arrived in Australia in pursuit of precious ore.
It is unclear whether that site was among those that were this week searched by police, who did not elaborate on the location of the six shafts, beyond saying they were between 5.5km and 12km from the homestead.
Police have not specified where the mines are, beyond saying they are between 5.5km and 12km from the homestead. (ABC News: Stephan Hammat)
But they indicated the decision to search them had followed conversations with Gus’s loved ones.
“That came out in discussions with family, and [as] part of the inquiry we have to eliminate all potential areas,” Assistant Commissioner Newitt said.
“We looked at several locations around there — we looked at some mine shafts and some other areas that cropped up on the aerial mapping and also areas that came out of the recent searches.”
Mounted police during the search for Gus. (ABC News: Daniel Taylor)
Those searches began two months ago, in the immediate aftermath of Gus’s disappearance.
Police have said he was last seen playing in sand outside his family’s homestead on the afternoon of Saturday, September 27.
A tracker during the early days of the initial phase of the search. (ABC News: Daniel Taylor)
In the following week, emergency services, trackers, volunteers and the army scoured the landscape from the ground and the air.
While a footprint raised hopes of a lead, it turned into a false trail — but even after that phase concluded, a special drone with infrared capabilities continued to patrol the skies.
Police returned in force for another four-day effort in mid-October and later drained a dam, before this week switching their attention to the mines.
Within days of Gus going missing, police released an image of a footprint. (Supplied: SA Police)
“Several of the shafts were relatively shallow and could be visually inspected but the remainder were up to 20 metres deep and specialised equipment was required,” they said.
On Wednesday afternoon, after two days of examinations, police solemnly revealed that no clues had been unearthed.
“There hasn’t been any evidence or information found during these searches, unfortunately,” Assistant Commissioner Newitt said.
“We still don’t know where Gus is at this time.”
