AJ Elfalak: An inside look at how rescuers found missing three-year-old boy
‘What in the bloody hell are you doing here mate?’ SES veteran Greg “Bluey” Chalmers recalls the moment he climbed out of wombat hole and found missing AJ Elfalak.
As Kelly Elfalak sat in the back of an ambulance cradling her son AJ, with her husband Anthony and three other sons nearby, the NSW Polair helicopter flew circles above the family’s home with lights flashing and sirens blaring.
In sporting terms it would have been considered a victory lap.
But this moment was not solely about celebrating the helicopter crew who had somehow spotted the three-year-old drinking from a creek in the incredibly dense bush after 72 hours alone in the wilderness.
It was also about celebrating the throng of family, SES volunteers, RFS crews and police officers, who were all waving up at the helicopter from down below having joined forces in search of their team’s common goal – to get a little boy back into his mother’s arms.
“He’s with us, he’s here, he’s safe and well and healthy, that’s all that matters,” a grateful Mrs Elfalak said on Tuesday, after her son had been released from Maitland Hospital. “I heard (about the public response, but) I haven’t seen anything.
“I just want to thank everybody, the media, the police, the RFS, the SES, everybody that prayed for us and helped find him. I’m so blessed.”
It was about 11.30am on Monday when pandemonium broke out in Putty, in NSW’s Hunter Region, when it was confirmed AJ was in the arms of rescuers.
The man who radioed the good news through was Greg “Bluey” Chalmers, an SES volunteer of 10 years who, when the call came on Saturday afternoon for volunteers to help, turned to his wife and said: “I can’t just sit here while that boy’s out there.”
Two nights before he first held AJ in his arms, Mr Chalmers was in a spot not far away dropping glow sticks on the bush floor, hoping they might catch the eye of the youngster and make him easier to spot in the pitch black night.
He had just crawled out of searching a wombat hole on Monday morning when the Polair helicopter called out over the PA for him to move forward.
At that point, he did not know if it would be good news, or bad news.
“They called out over the PA ‘move forward’, so I climbed over the ravine and not 15 metres in front of me was a little boy drinking water. I just said to him: ‘What in the bloody hell are you doing here mate?’
“I said ‘AJ, it’s Bluey, how you going mate?’ He turned around to look at me and there was just this smile, it was a special moment.”
After checking AJ for cuts, bruises and breaks, he picked up his radio and made a “no-duff” call, a call used only in emergencies which means everyone on the airwaves should be quiet, and told them: “I’ve got AJ.”
“That’s all I said, that’s all I needed to say,” Mr Chalmers said.
A three-year-old child missing on a rural property in the Hunter region since Friday has been located following a large-scale search.https://t.co/VrlVwL4sYWpic.twitter.com/byOXFCiD1j
— NSW Police Force (@nswpolice) September 6, 2021
While naturally the NSW police investigation is ongoing, when AJ was discovered he was dripping wet and freezing cold, with a full nappy – all signs consistent with a three-year-old spending four days in the bush.
Mr Chalmers said the little boy’s survival is easily the best thing he’s seen since joining the SES.
“I’m a parent and I believe in miracles, and a miracle happened that day,” he said.
“It was a moment that I won’t forget.”
The moment will also be unforgettable for helicopter pilot Kevin Drake who first spotted AJ.
Over the days before other Polair crews and even private helicopters hired by AJ’s father Anthony had been scouring the search area without luck.
Special Constable Drake had only been in the air for 20 minutes when he saw movement below and zeroed in for a closer look.
“(We were) coming in low and slow over the trees and we saw this movement … and because as you’ve seen on the video he was drinking, that was the movement … and we were like: ‘Oh, what’s that?’,” he said.
“I couldn’t believe it actually, we’d only just started the search, we were like: ‘That’s him!’.”
The incredible outcome brought back memories of Steven Walls, whose disappearance in 1960 led to what was then Australia’s biggest land and air search.
Just like AJ, Walls wandered off from his family’s farm near Guyra, in New England region of NSW, and was missing for four days.
His disappearance and miraculous discovery led country singer John Ashcroft to pen the song Little Boy Lost, which spent several weeks at No.1 on the charts.
