Hunt goes on for missing schoolgirl Siriyakorn 'Bung' Siriboon

The search for answers started with a grisly promise. A policeman stood hunched in a creek bed with a sealed plastic bag. Patrick Carlyon describes the scene.

The search for answers started with a grisly promise. A policeman stood hunched in a creek bed with a sealed plastic bag.

Inside the bag appeared to be a bone.

It was a tick after 9am. Over the next hour, there would be more bags and more bones.

It was 26 months since Bung vanished on the five-minute walk to school in Boronia.

Police silent over arrest rumours

Was this the start to mapping the end of her life, here in Old Joes Creek Retarding Basin, where the whine of chainsaws yesterday conspired with the toll of a nearby school bell?

Apparently not. The bones were animal, explained Detective Inspector John Potter, a few hours later.

As for the excavator, bobcat, cyclone fencing, cadaver dogs, police officers and dozens of searchers behind him?

Do not assume the police were responding to "credible information", he said.

Bung

Indeed, as if to tamp down expectations, Potter opened up new possibilities when he floated the "reward" word.

By dusk yesterday, kids scrambled in the tiny playground across the road.

Creek search shows new development

Joggers and dog walkers discovered the reserve and walking path were locked away for another night.

Bung's mother, Vanidda, would again go to sleep not knowing.

Some passers-by were curious - after all, a 13-year-old girl vanished one morning within 130m of her school, seconds from a road that sends drivers batty for its peak-hour congestion, in a suburb of children's chatter and birdcalls.

There have been no comparable abductions before or since. Bung was here, then she wasn't. All we now know is that we still don't know.

Police comments don't add up

No physical evidence so far uncovered points to her remains being in a park 800-odd metres in the opposite direction to that she was walking the day she disappeared. In the weeks after Bung's disappearance, local parents drove or escorted children to school.

Power poles were pasted with Bung's smiling face.

She was a "sweet girl" with no secrets. This only heightens the puzzle.

The world smoothes over its wrinkles - yesterday, a toddler rode her scooter, unaccompanied, along the footpath of Harcourt Rd, where Bung was last sighted.

The outside blinds of Bung's home, however, were pulled to full extension, despite the sun's weak glare from the opposite horizon. The cars in the driveway hadn't moved in 24 hours.

The family is said to hope that Bung is still alive.

There has been no shortage of offers of help, not only from 900 callers to Crime Stoppers, but local residents telling searchers that dogs are let off the leash in the reserve.

One resident yesterday said there was a big fox population in the area.

The resident offered his own theory about Bung's fate - doesn't everyone have one? - but then he trailed off. "I just don't know," he said.

The question is - who does?