A small footprint in the dust was the only clue left behind when four-year-old Gus Lamont vanished. It was found about 500 yards from a pile of red dirt he often used as a sandpit. His grandmother last saw him playing there around 5 p.m., but when he was called in for dinner just 30 minutes later, he was gone. Despite an extensive search involving hundreds of police, soldiers, volunteers, and an Aboriginal tracker across vast areas of the South Australian Outback, the blond, curly-haired boy has not been found. What began as a missing-person case has since drawn intense media attention and online speculation, while the private life of Gus’s sheep-farming family is increasingly being pulled into the public spotlight.
