New details have emerged about the massive search and recovery efforts conducted in the South Australian outback for missing four-year-old Gus Lamont.

Saturday, September 27, will remain a day seared into the memories of the four-year-old’s grief-stricken family, but also for hundreds of emergency services workers, ADF personnel and SES volunteers.

On that fateful evening, Gus’s grandmother Josie Murray frantically began searching for her four-year-old grandson, who she assumed had wandered away from the homestead after she last saw him playing on a nearby sand hill.

The homestead happens to be in the middle of the massive 150,000-acre remote Oak Park sheep station near Yunta in SA, an unforgiving landscape for a missing child.

“Gus is a little four-year-old blond, curly-haired, smiling face young fellow who has been missing from a farm property about 43km south of the township of Yunta,” SA Police Assistant Commissioner Ian Parrott explained after the initial alarm was raised.

“The last time Gus was seen by family is approximately 5pm that night, and when a family member came out later in the evening, they were calling him back inside; they couldn’t find him.”

As the South Australian Police took control of the operation to find Gus, the call went out to one sector of Australia’s orange army of volunteers, the SES, to mobilise.

And mobilise they did.

State Emergency Service personnel work on a voluntary basis, often having to leave work and family at short notice to assist with natural disaster assistance and search and rescue efforts.

The reaction to an SOS for help to find a lost child in one of the harshest environments in Australia was immediate and admirable.

“We put a call out for expressions of interest to assist in the search which was being coordinated by SA Police,” a South Australia SES spokesperson told The Nightly.

“Bear in mind not all of our volunteers can assist in an operation such as this one because they have to have done specific training.

“Every person we were calling out to, must have done specialised search and rescue training or have been trained in certain other areas to be considered.”

The response was overwhelming.

More than 100 volunteers ticked all the boxes and quickly converged on the property and surrounding areas for what was to be a gruelling and frustrating week.

“It was a significant effort for to get that many people there. We had teams of our people who would swap in and out because of the heat and the distance they needed to cover,” the spokesperson said.

“They would be walking up to 25km a day in very hot conditions so we would swap them in and out. Teams of 40 would go out and then swap with another team of 30 or 40.

“We had drone operators, six UTVs (utility terrain vehicle), four motorbikes, two drones with Starlink connectivity and that was all being coordinated by SA Police, who had helicopters there as well.”

The emotional toll on those involved in searches and cases such as Gus Lamont’s disappearance is also a consideration for the SES hierarchy, who are cognisant of the effect it can have on people.

“Our SES volunteers see a lot of things that most people don’t want to see. We have a range of counselling services available for any of our people who feel they need them,” the SES spokesperson said.

South Australian Police Commissioner Grant Stevens spoke out this week and explained the heart-wrenching operation to find Gus would remain an open case and that his officers were still planning new recovery operations if any new information came to light.

“We’ve done a minimum of two reviews in relation to the searching exercise from the moment we were advised that Gus had gone missing,” Mr Stevens told the The Advertiser.

“Peer-reviews by experts who have taken an objective view of whether or not things could have gone differently.

“Those reviews have identified opportunities to enhance what we’ve done but there’s been no criticism of the search effort.

“We’ve been acting on the advice of survivability experts, doctors, medical staff, in relation to how far Gus might travel and how long he would be able to survive without any support or assistance.

“That was a factor that dictated how far we would search and how long.

“We are continuing to go back because we are still committed to recovering Gus for the family, so everybody has some sense of closure in relation to what’s occurred up in Yunta,” Mr Stevens confirmed.

CRE: https://thenightly.com.au/australia/south-australia/gus-lamont-ses-reveals-incredible-mobilisation-of-orange-army-in-search-for-missing-yunta-4yo-c-20593171