Six months, 60k hectares, and no trace: Outback search for missing South Australian boy Gus Lamont reaches grim milestone
September 27, 2025 will forever remain a date carefully etched in the memories of Josh Lamont and Jess Murray.
This is when their beloved son Gus was last seen at Oak Park station in the South Australian outback.
Six months have passed since that fateful day, and investigators are still no closer to knowing what happened to the four-year-old blonde boy or where he is now.
Gus Lamont was last seen playing in a dirt pile on the family property near Yunta around 5pm on Saturday evening.
Around 5.30pm, his grandmother went to call him in, but there was no sign of him.
The family searched the house for about 3 hours and reported the situation to the police.
The call sparked a massive and widespread search of 60,000 hectares of land, involving food handlers, Aboriginal trackers and drones, but no evidence was found.
In the following weeks and months police returned to the field on several separate occasions; he discharged a curse, scoured the mineshafts, and searched further afield.
But still no answers were found.
The police investigation saw officers pursuing several lines of inquiry and in February detectives said they no longer believed little Gus had been “wandering” or “abducted”.
That same month, SAPOL identified a sheep station resident Gus knew as a suspect and declared his disappearance a capital crime.
However, his parents were ruled out as suspects.
Midway through the month, Gus’s maternal grandmother, Josie Murray, was arrested and charged with a firearms offense unrelated to her grandson’s disappearance.
Another bombshell in March was South Australian police commissioner Grant Stevens’ claims that the boy’s family members were no longer assisting with the investigation.
He said: “We are still working with Gus’s mother and father and there are other members of the family who are no longer co-operative.”
This month, police returned to the remote property and searched several more locations in the hope that above-average rainfall might present new opportunities.
However, authorities said that “unfortunately, no evidence was found” in the new searches.
Now, as the six-month milestone approaches, police have not ruled out carrying out further searches in and around the area as they try to answer the desperate parents’ questions.
But at the heart of this tragedy are two parents “united in grief” and grappling with the thought that they may never see their young son again.
In a heartbreaking joint statement released in February, the pair said: “Our lives have been shattered and every moment without him is unbearable.
“We know someone out there may have information. If anyone knows what happened, we would appeal to that person, or anyone who may have seen or heard anything, to come forward.
“All we want is to bring Gus home and figure out what happened to our beautiful boy.”
