When four-year-old boy Gus Lamont vanished without a trace from his family’s homestead in South Australia’s harsh landscape, one of the country’s biggest searches began.

As of October 27, 2025, it has been a month since he went missing, and the urgency to find him has only intensified.

Was Gus Lamont found?

Sadly, he hasn’t been found yet.

In a statement on October 7, South Australian Police’s (SAPOL) Assistant Commissioner Ian Parrott revealed that “no trace” of him, such as clothing, a hat, or other tangible pieces of evidence, has been found.

While a search has been conducted within a six-kilometre radius of the homestead, Flinders University Associate Professor Nina Siversten said he might have travelled beyond that.

“Over a three-day period, we’re looking at potentially three to eight kilometres,” she told 7NEWS on October 27.

When he went missing, he was wearing a blue long-sleeved Minions T-shirt, a grey sun hat, and boots.

She also said that he might have survived longer than three days.

“If the child could access some sort of moisture or dew or moist leaves that could increase it somewhat beyond the three days,” Nina said.

“I think that fear would be an absolute factor and that would impact on the ability to move and ability, but also on finding shelter.”
(Credit: Adelaide Police)

When did Gus Lamont go missing?

He was last seen on September 27 at 5pm, playing on a mound of dirt near his family’s Oak Park Station homestead, which is approximately 43 kilometres south of the Yunta township.

Half an hour later, his grandmother went outside to call him, but he was nowhere to be seen.

A family member told SAPOL that he had never left the family property before, and he was a shy child, but adventurous.

Theories about his disappearance

While the police worked off the theory that he wandered off, criminologist Xanthe Mallett told our sister publication Woman’s Day that she was worried that another party was involved.

“In that kind of terrain, Gus should’ve been fairly easy to locate had he simply wandered off,” she said.

“But there’s been no sign of him, so you have to think, at this stage, that there’s been third-party intervention, sadly.”

Hours after an intense and desperate search, his family called the police at 8.30pm.

SES volunteers, police, and members of the Australian Army then extensively searched more than 60,000 hectares by air and ground.

A day before the statement was issued, a small footprint was found around a dam about 5.5 kilometres west of the homestead, but it was discovered not to be related to Gus.

Are the police still searching for Gus Lamont?

In another statement issued on October 7, Deputy Commissioner Linda Williams confirmed that the search for the boy was “scaled back following medical experts’ advice that there was little hope for us to find Gus alive”.

The statement continued to say that they continued their search for three further days.

It was then handed over to the police’s Missing Persons Section.

“We will never give up hope of finding Gus,” she said. “There are further lines of enquiry being undertaken and the family have continued to cooperate fully with police.”

The local community has rallied around the Lamont family, and are determined to find Gus.

“Having young children myself, my biggest fear is what this family is going through,” mum-of-nine Rachael Manning told The Advertiser.

“We talk about it every day and it’s affected us all. We just want to help and we hope for the best.”

SOURCE: https://www.who.com.au/news/what-happened-to-gus-lamont/