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The heartbreak of losing a home and personal possessions from bushfire is sadly an all-too-common experience throughout rural Australia. As the fire danger passes, those who have lost so much are understandably desperate to return to their former homes to see what can be salvaged, and to begin to process their loss. On 25 January 2020, a young mother and father returned to their destroyed home on their 88-acre bush property at Waterholes, north of Bairnsdale in East Gippsland, to begin this process when they were suddenly faced with the loss of something far more valuable than any possession. As the father headed off to survey the damage, the parents believed their four-year-old son was safe. The father thought the boy was with his mother, the mum thought he was following his dad doing the inspections. When they reunited, they realised they were wrong. Their son was missing, alone in the blackened landscape.
After their hurried search failed to locate their son, the parents alerted Bairnsdale police. “Following a devastating bushfire, usual landmarks are impacted, causing confusion,” said Acting Sergeant Matt Webb, who led the Search and Rescue (SAR) team that responded. “Damaged and destroyed buildings and fences look very different or are simply gone, there’s no foliage or undergrowth in the bush, animal or human pathways through the bush are gone and thousands of burnt tree trunks are still standing or lying scattered on the ground. “Everything in sight is black and it all looks the same. The bush is seemingly lifeless. “It is no wonder that a four-year-old boy trying to catch up to his father would lose his way, and not be able to find his way back. Efforts the boy made in trying to get back would very likely be taking him further away.” Once alerted, Bairnsdale police launched an extensive search. While the fire ravaged environment added significant hazards, with damaged and falling trees the primary concern, one beacon of positivity was the number of emergency services personnel that were nearby, with firefighters and Australian Defence Force troops joining police in the search.
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POLICE LIFE | SPRING 2020
The SAR squad was initially deployed as a dive team after a police canine gave a very strong indication that something was in a small dam on the property. While the search continued in bushland into the evening, the dive team undertook the grim task of searching the dam for a body. They did find a body, that of a wallaby that likely used the dam to escape the flames, but nothing else of note. With the dam searched and cleared, focus went back to finding the boy in the burnt bushland, with over 200 people from a variety of organisations and specialist police units on site the next day. Around noon, about 24 hours after the boy first went missing, a search group calling his name got a reply. “I’m over here.” The boy emerged from behind a log, which he had used as a shelter overnight. He was found about two kilometres from his last known location in good health. Positive outcomes like the one at Waterholes in January can often be viewed as lucky, a case of a searcher stumbling across the missing person by being in the right place at the right time.
