![\"In](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/in-may-police-searched-several-wells-and-bores-in-the-area-f-KTO4ATMIYBAV7J3NWK3MNKIXLA.png\")
<\/p>\nA AU$1 million (NZ$1.25 million) reward has been offered for any information about missing toddler Gus Lamont one year after he disappeared from his family’s rural property.<\/p>\n
South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas and Police Minister Michael Brown announced on Wednesday that they were matching the highest reward ever issued in the state’s history for information that would lead to finding a body or a criminal conviction.<\/p>\n
“Justice needs to be done in one way or another,” Malinauskas said.<\/p>\n
“We will not tolerate, as a state, any circumstances where children go missing are not able to be accounted for.<\/p>\n
“We throw everything at it, and today we put on the table and put in place a $1 million reward to achieve that outcome.”<\/p>\n
Detective Superintendent Darren Fielke said the detectives working the case “live and breathe this every day”. <\/p>\n
“They are working their asses off on this job,” he said.<\/p>\n
Fielke announced on February 5 that the incident had been declared a major crime and police believed Gus was no longer alive. <\/p>\n
‘Inconsistencies and discrepancies’<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In May, police searched several wells and bores in the area following recent heavy rain and flooding on the property. (Source: South Australia Police)<\/p>\n
Detectives have previously said Gus was last seen by his grandmother playing on a mound of dirt near the homestead at Oak Park, a sprawling sheep station near Yunta in outback South Australia, on September 27, 2025.<\/p>\n
Assistant Commissioner Ian Parrott later said that Gus was seen at 5pm on the day of his disappearance by his grandmother.<\/p>\n
“At 5.30pm, she has gone outside to call him in, only to find him missing,” he said.<\/p>\n
The initial 10-day air and ground search was one of the largest SA Police had undertaken, involving hundreds of emergency service personnel.<\/p>\n
Search teams and Major Crime detectives have repeatedly returned to the property, but they have yet to uncover any clues or evidence as to the boy’s fate. <\/p>\n
The only other people at the property at the time were Gus’s grandmother Josie Murray, his mother Jess Murray, and Gus’s younger brother.<\/p>\n
Police said they had identified ”inconsistencies and discrepancies” in timelines provided by family members and a person living at Oak Park had withdrawn their support and was no longer co-operating with detectives.<\/p>\n
Family members told police that Gus was a shy but adventurous child and while he was a good walker, he had never previously left the family property.<\/p>\n
In an interview this week, Gus’s grandmother Josie Murray said it ”brings me to tears that he’s not here”.<\/p>\n
Josie Murray said she still wanted to know what happened to her grandson.<\/p>\n
Police had told her she was the main suspect but she believed Gus was taken by a stranger.<\/p>\n
”I think he has to have been taken,” she said.<\/p>\n
”Nothing else makes sense.” <\/p>\n
‘Our lives have been shattered’<\/p>\n
After the major crime declaration, grandparents Josie and Shannon Murray released a brief statement via their lawyers saying they were devastated by the police assertions.<\/p>\n
“The family has co-operated fully with the investigation and want nothing more than to find Gus and reunite him with his mum and dad,” they said.<\/p>\n
In November, search teams focused on six mine shafts near property, 40km south of Yunta, using specialist officers, but found no trace of Gus.<\/p>\n
On February 24, Josh Lamont and Jess Murray released a statement saying they were ”united in our grief, and we are united in our search for answers about what happened to our little boy, Gus, who means everything to us”.<\/p>\n
”Our lives have been shattered, and every moment without him is unbearable,” they said.<\/p>\n
Police used AI to analyse vast amounts of imaging data to conclude that Gus was not in the 5.47km radius that missing children around his age are usually located.<\/p>\n
In June, Josie Murray was fined AU$10,500 (NZ$13,074) for possessing a silencer for a .22 rifle and disqualified from holding a firearms licence for five years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A AU$1 million (NZ$1.25 million) reward has been offered for any information about missing toddler Gus Lamont one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":609280,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[85,67,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-609279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-australia","tag-crime-and-justice","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=609279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/609280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=609279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=609279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=609279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}