Police target remote mine shafts on Oak Park Station in desperate new search for Gus Lamont
Police face mounting pressure to solve the mystery of the four-year-old’s baffling disappearance as they target six mine shafts in a new search.
Two months on with no answers, police are under mounting pressure to find little Gus Lamont as they return to the remote Mid North on Tuesday for a fresh search, targeting six remote mine shafts.
Specialist STAR Group officers and Task Force Horizon detectives returned to Oak Park Station, 40km south of Yunta, to start searching a series of uncovered, unfenced mine shafts.
The different shafts sit between 5.5km and 12km from the family’s homestead, where four-year-old Gus was last seen 59 days ago, playing in the sand at about 5pm on September 27 before vanishing from the 6000ha sheep station.
Officers spent 10 hours in the heat as the sun beat down during the first day of their painstaking search of the first of the six mine shafts.
The team arrived in a convoy of four unmarked vehicles about 8am, kicking up clouds of dust as they rolled back through the chained gates of Oak Park Station.
With not a cloud in sight, the temperature climbed steadily throughout the day. By early afternoon, Yunta had hit 32C with an extreme UV index of 12.
For 10 hours, officers methodically worked their way through the first shafts, checking the sites for any trace of four-year-old Gus, before pulling out for the day at about 6pm.
Police say they only recently became aware of these mine shafts, which sit outside all previously searched ground areas.
The operation is expected to run over the next three days, using specialist equipment to lower officers into each shaft and eliminate the sites from the investigation.
A Yunta man close to the initial search said the area had been dotted with old shafts since the gold rush in the 1880s.
“There are a few (mine shafts) from ages ago, there’s nothing current but there’s plenty of holes out there,” he said.
“There’s drilling holes, and there’s large wombat holes, there’s all sorts of things. But there are some tunnels and stuff, you know, from a little bit of exploration, years and years ago.”
In Peterborough, local mum Lyn said she hoped this search is the one that finally finds him and brings his family some closure.
“I lost two sons to suicide, so I know what the pain of losing a son feels like. I really, really hope they can find him. Not knowing what happened — or where he is — would be even worse,” she said.
Meanwhile, SA falcon expert Paul Willcock has dismissed theories being spread online that a wedge-tailed eagle could have taken little Gus.
“I am 100 per cent sure that can’t happen,” he said.
Mr Willcock said an average four-year-old child weighs around 16–18kg, far beyond what an eagle can lift.
“A maximum would be about five kilos, its own body weight,” he said.
He said the idea of an eagle carrying off a struggling child is “impossible”.
“If you had two eagles dragging him, you’d see the drag,” he said. “It just can’t happen.”
The shaft search comes after weeks of exhaustive work across some of the state’s harshest terrain.
On October 31, officers drained a 3.2-million-litre dam on the property to rule out the possibility the boy had drowned. Nothing was found.
That followed a 10-day initial search, then a four-day follow-up operation ending on 17 October, involving SA Police, ADF members, SES volunteers, Aboriginal trackers and local property owners.
Ground crews have now searched 95 square kilometres on foot, extending 5.5km from the homestead.
Mounted units and PolAir expanded the wider sweep to an estimated 470 square kilometres.
Police had hoped the vast sweeps would locate Gus or reveal the direction he may have walked, but nothing substantial was found.
Task Force Horizon continues to investigate multiple lines of inquiry and maintains there is no evidence of foul play.
Gus lived at Oak Park Station with his mother Jess, his baby brother Ronnie, and his two grandmothers, Josie and Shannon Murray.
His father, Joshua Lamont, lives at Belalia North, about 100km away, and commuted to the property regularly.
Police say the family has been fully cooperative from the beginning and is being supported by a victim contact officer.
