I'm a bit late, I wasn't on in time yesterday to see this before LE finished searching the shafts, but I have permission from Total_C to post this awesome probability check:
"A simple probability check on the “wandered into a mineshaft” idea
I wanted to sanity-check the notion that a just-turned-4-year-old wandered off around 5 pm in late September and somehow ended up in one of six mine shafts located between 5.5 and 12 km from the homestead. This is purely geometry and physical limits.
1. How far a 4-year-old can realistically travel
To give this scenario every benefit of the doubt:
Walking speed for a small child in that terrain is roughly 2 km/h.
Maximum continuous movement before dark, cold and exhaustion is about 4 hours.
This gives an upper-limit straight-line radius of 8 km. That already assumes no stopping, no crying, no fear, no lying down, no looping, no terrain issues and perfect direction. Anything at 12 km is essentially out of physical reach.
2. Size of the actual target
Even being generous, if each shaft is roughly 5 m by 5 m, that is 25 m² of surface opening per shaft.
Six shafts give a combined “danger zone” of about 150 m².
3. Area the child could be in
A circle with an 8 km radius covers:
π × 8000² ≈ 201,000,000 m²
Now compare that with the combined 150 m² footprint of the shafts.
150 divided by 201,000,000 ≈ 0.00000075
That equals about 0.000075 per cent, or roughly one chance in 1.3 million.
This is already using extremely favourable assumptions for the shaft scenario.
4. Real behaviour makes the odds even lower
Four-year-olds almost never walk in a continuous straight line for hours. They wander, turn back, sit, hide, cry, freeze from fear or darkness and are slowed by terrain. All of this reduces the realistic radius, not increases it. Which means the shafts at 5.5 to 12 km lie well outside typical child-wander distances.
5. What this means once you add the known behaviour
The maths alone makes the “wandered into a distant shaft” scenario microscopic. But when you place that next to the post-incident family behaviour, which many have noted as atypical for a missing-child situation, it becomes even harder to support the wander-off theory.
The elements most people find unusual are:
• delayed reporting timeline
• hostility toward media contact
• communicating only through intermediaries
• unusual living arrangements, with the father living elsewhere from the mother and children
• complete absence from media appeals or public pleas for assistance
Individually, some of these could be explained away. Taken together, they form a pattern that does not align with what we normally see in genuine missing-child incidents where families desperately seek attention, exposure and help.
When you combine the statistical improbability with the behavioural context, the “wandered off and fell into a distant shaft” explanation becomes extraordinarily weak.
From a numbers standpoint alone, it simply does not hold weight."
While I agree on the premise that it is improbable to have occurred 12 km away, it is not improbable to have occurred within close vicinity to the house, if a shaft or mine exists closer to the house than is known. This is still probable (no matter the percentage of probability) until it is deemed improbable by ground scanning the entire area. Freak accidents are exactly that, freak accidents. The probability of a freak accident occurring may be 1% but even at a low percentage, it is still possible. Nothing can be negated or ruled out, to be fair and accurate, until there is zero percent probability.
Not wanting media attention may have nothing to do with Gus but rather fear of the focus going on his GM for the gender change as opposed to the grandson, because he is missing. Unfortunately, stigma is still alive and well, and sometimes the media "throws spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks", so to speak.
Delayed reporting may be because they didn't think he was missing, perhaps they thought he would show his wee face any minute. Then the minutes became longer until they realised that there was nothing else that they could do on their own and that they needed assistance if they were to find their son/grandson.
Father and mother may not be in a domestic relationship anymore. If this is the case, then no, it would not be unusual for them to live in separate abodes, and it would not be unusual for this child's mother to live at home where there is family support for her and her child.
Hostility towards media, oh, I can absolutely understand that! My SIL had collapsed on the front lawn of her home while the fire brigade was trying to get her young son's body out of a burning building, and the media was in her face, trying to catch her emotions for their audience. My MIL didn't take kindly to it either and physically pushed the media off of their property. The media can be.... let's say...more interested in a story than the emotional toll being experienced by a mother and/or family.
<modsnip: AI is not an approved source for facts in a case>
I have wondered if his mother had left the homestead in a vehicle to check on the sheep, and he was hiding in the vehicle, or if any other family members had come and gone during that time. This would give an opportunity for Gus to leave the property without leaving any evidence behind.
Just what if........ the grandmother remembers the timeline incorrectly for reasons unknown.
Just what if....... the daughter left just after her mother went inside.
Just what if .......... not everything is as it was remembered.
What then, what difference could that make?
Could it explain how Gus had "disappeared" without a trace?
