{"id":181117,"date":"2025-09-30T23:07:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-30T23:07:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/181117\/"},"modified":"2025-09-30T23:07:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T23:07:09","slug":"search-enters-fifth-day-for-missing-four-year-old-boy-on-property-near-yunta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/181117\/","title":{"rendered":"Search enters fifth day for missing four-year-old boy on property near Yunta"},"content":{"rendered":"

The search for a missing four-year-old boy in South Australia’s north has entered its fifth day, after police continued to search overnight.<\/p>\n

Gus was last seen playing in sand at his family’s remote sheep grazing station<\/a> on Saturday about 40km south of Yunta.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, a statement was released by the boy’s family<\/a> in which they said they were “devastated by the disappearance of our beloved Gus”.<\/p>\n

In the statement \u2014 which was read by family friend Bill Harbison, who went to school with Gus’s grandparents \u2014 the family said they missed Gus “more than words can express”.<\/p>\n

“Our hearts are aching and we are holding onto hope that he will be found and returned to us safely,” they said.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Bill Harbison is a friend of the family of four-year-old Gus, who went missing near Yunta. (ABC News: Daniel Taylor)<\/p>\n

Police are confident Gus was on the property and had not been taken, so a photo of the boy has not been shared, but police have released an image showing the shirt he was wearing.<\/p>\n

Superintendent Mark Syrus said there had been no clues discovered about what direction Gus had gone in, but there was still hope he would be found.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday morning, he told ABC Radio that police aircraft including drones and a helicopter equipped with infrared and thermal imaging cameras had been conducting searches.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

SA Police shared an image of a ‘Minions’ shirt which is similar to the one four-year-old Gus was wearing when he went missing. (Supplied: SA Police)<\/p>\n

He said teams on the ground had been “looking for clues of which way he might have gone, and then we can just move our efforts into that area”.<\/p>\n

“The field search controller’s job is to look at the terrain, look at the personnel and then to segment areas and then to allocate them to search teams,” he said.<\/p>\n

“They’ll put them into a line and then they’ll actually walk across the countryside so they’re actually looking under the bushes in that search area.<\/p>\n

“It’s called a ‘contact search’, it’s pretty thorough and we’re just looking for clues \u2014 footprints, hats, anything he might have discarded.”<\/p>\n

ABC reporter Bethanie Alderson has been on the scene since Monday and said authorities were working in trying conditions.<\/p>\n

“The enormity of the sheep station hits you as soon as you arrive, with blue bush scattering the red dirt as far as the eye can see,” she said.<\/p>\n

“The only sign of its end is the blue, rugged peaks on the horizon. The beginning of the Flinders Ranges.”<\/p>\n

\"Taken<\/p>\n

The terrain around where Gus was last seen is vast and rugged (ABC News: Daniel Taylor)<\/p>\n

She said areas that appeared flat and smooth at first glance were deceivingly rugged and hilly terrain.<\/p>\n

“The arid scrubland is laced with winding sandy tracks, which reveal hidden crevices and dry creek beds at almost every turn.”<\/p>\n

She said the area was dusty due to high winds, further stirred by those searching the property on motorbikes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The search for a missing four-year-old boy in South Australia’s north has entered its fifth day, after police…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":181118,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,115600,17405,12753,115597,115293,115295,45318,116348,44,10174,87230],"class_list":["post-181117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bill-harbison","tag-boy","tag-child","tag-four-year-old","tag-gus","tag-mark-syrus","tag-missing","tag-missing-boy-outback-sa","tag-news","tag-sa-police","tag-sheep-station"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}