Australia AUSTRALIA - 4YO AUGUST (GUS) Missing from rural family home in Outback, Yunta, South Australia, 27th Sept 2025

[seasideForest]

@gerardo20
I thought somebody on here refuted the claim that Gus's parents were separated? It came from a Daily Mail headline but nothing was mentioned in the article linked. Iirc.

 

[gerardo20]

@gerardo20
I thought somebody on here refuted the claim that Gus's parents were separated? It came from a Daily Mail headline but nothing was mentioned in the article linked. Iirc.

Good point, we don't know definitively.

 

[Dotta]

 

[_sleuthdog_]

@gerardo20
I thought somebody on here refuted the claim that Gus's parents were separated? It came from a Daily Mail headline but nothing was mentioned in the article linked. Iirc.

A day or so ago I gave my opinion that they were not married but I thought possibly together. Not sure if that is what you are referring to.

 

[seasideForest]

A day or so ago I gave my opinion that they were not married but I thought possibly together. Not sure if that is what you are referring to.

No. See post #4643 from @SouthAussie
Sry I'm not good at linking from my phone.

Also @gerardo20

 

[_sleuthdog_]

Gotcha, I assume you're referring to this one then

Notice in your linked article where it says "Gus Lamont's parents had split up just months before the toddler vanished from his grandparents' outback sheep station, a family friend has revealed."

When I follow the blue "revealed" link, it takes me to an Oct 2025 article that says nothing about them splitting up.
The family friend in the Oct 2025 article says that Jess & Josh didn't live together because Josh clashes with Josie.
The friend also says that Jess & Josh have a commuter relationship.

The elusive mother of missing Gus is pictured for the first time

The devastated mother and grandmother of missing boy Gus Lamont have been pictured for the first time - two and a half weeks after he vanished from his grandparents' remote Outback station.

www.dailymail.co.uk

 

[Old Soul]

This video is worth watching, it’s basically all the rumours from the Daily Mail but with some footage of the Yunta area.
It is good to be able to picture the locations.

 

[drsleuth]

https://www.news.com.au/national/south-australia/gary-jubelins-reaction-to-huge-gus-news/news-story/ca8182e16f80da046239009e4bb3d42c?dicbo=v2-dSWI7rH

Speaking to news.com.au, Gary Jubelin, the former lead investigator in the William Tyrell case, said it is “clear” police had moved onto the next phase of the investigation.

“I think it’s best [for the public] not to speculate what’s been done. The police have kept the public informed. They will have a strategy and an investigation plan in place,” he said.

“One thing I learnt through William Tyrrell thing is that speculation and rumours can impact on a lot of people. I don’t think there’s need for this.

“I think we should put our trust in the South Australia Police. They’ve kept the public informed where they need to.

“Now, I think the best thing would be to step back and let police do their job. The investigation would be best served if we (don’t) speculate what happened to Gus and let’s wait and find out at the conclusion of the investigation.”

 

[gerardo20]

I think we should put our trust in the South Australia Police.

Agreed, but only a qualified trust. Remember the policeman convicted in illegally pursuing a person of interest in the William Tyrrell case. Tyrrell foster parents speak out after former detective found guilty over recordings

Police have appealed for both respect for the family and for any leads from the public (facts, not opinions).

I do not trust DM reporters, and object to approaching the family home when told not to.

However, unfortunately, my trust in the SA police was not helped by the claim that Josie Murray was waving a gun while speaking to the DM reporter because Josie had wanted to shoot a snake on the porch....

 

[MIG214222]

I read this recently, it was posted Feb 9th, 2026, it's fascinating: Australia - AUSTRALIA - 4YO AUGUST (GUS) Missing from rural family home in Outback, Yunta, South Australia, 27th Sept 2025

Ms

 

[linge]

I want to own something I’ve been short sighted on.

I’ve seen the reporting that Jess and Josie were about 10km away doing station work when Gus went missing. I didn’t give it much weight for two reasons.

First, I’ve always disliked the initial timeline, especially the three hour gap before police were called. Because that gap never sat right with me, anything tied to it got discounted as well.

Second, that 10km detail initially seemed to come from one outlet only. It felt like a leak, and I treated it like an unconfirmed media detail rather than something to build a full scenario around.

For the purpose of this post, I’m doing the opposite. I’m giving that 10km detail full weight and pressure testing what the case looks like if it’s true.

Assumptions

Assumption 1
Jess and Josie really were away from the homestead area around the time Gus was last seen and then noticed missing.

Assumption 2
They may have been away working for a large part of the day, not just for one moment. Meaning the “gap” is potentially bigger than the three hours everyone fixates on.

Assumption 3
Police are now effectively ruling out wandered off and ruling out stranger abduction, and are focusing on someone known to him, with timeline discrepancies central to that.

If those assumptions hold, this pulls a lot together.

The three hour gap no longer needs to be interpreted as the mother choosing not to call police. It can be interpreted as the call being made when the away pair returned and insisted on escalating, while the person at the homestead was the one making the initial decisions and setting the initial narrative.

And this is the part I think I’ve underweighted the whole time.

If only one adult was physically present for the critical window, then everyone else is downstream of that person’s account. The baseline story becomes whatever that person says happened, and the others are reacting to it, searching within it, and repeating it, even if doubts form later. That also explains why discrepancies and inconsistencies can become such a big deal months later. Because if the foundation account is wrong, everything built on top of it is wrong, and it takes time and objective checking to expose that.

It also means the “cleanest” structure is not complicated. It’s a single point of truth problem. One person has the fullest information about what happened in the critical window, and everyone else has fragments and assumptions.

If the 10km away detail is wrong, this whole framework collapses. If it’s right, it explains why the early narrative could hold for as long as it did, and why police are now talking about timeline discrepancies as the driver for suspect focus.

That’s my updated thinking.

Interested in how others interpret the 10km detail and whether they think it changes the three hour gap the way it does for me.

A couple of things to maybe factor into your thinking about the version of the timeline we've been told (some we have no way of actually getting the answers to, but still might be worth thinking about):

It says Shannon was making dinner and called Gus in for dinner when she noticed he was missing at 17:30. Was she preparing a separate little kid dinner, or was it a dinner for the whole family to eat together? If the latter, it could possibly indicate an approximate time for when the other two were expected to come back to the homestead.

Second, it could be worth remembering that even today, agriculture work is often very tied to daylight hours, particularly anything out on the land instead of in structures with lighting to work by (yes, you can work by headlights/flashlights/headlamps in a pinch, but don't recommend it if it isn't something that urgently needs to get finished). Sunset was 18:11 that day (link to earlier post establishing time) , about 40 minutes after Gus was first noticed missing in the timeline given, so they'd probably be heading back to the homestead by then, even if they weren't frantically called back (whether by satellite phone, radio, walkie-talkie...they did probably keep some form of communication between them when working far afield). Yes it would likely have taken them some time to cover that distance back, but not hours. Believe it was established that the police got there within about an hour of being called, arriving at around 21:30. That still leaves a long chunk of time after night fell not calling the police for a missing child when you could reasonably expect everyone to be home and apprised of the situation.

 

[linge]

@gerardo20
I thought somebody on here refuted the claim that Gus's parents were separated? It came from a Daily Mail headline but nothing was mentioned in the article linked. Iirc.

There was another person interviewed, a neighbor in Adelaide, who stated that they had last seen them all as a family, Gus included, just a few weeks before he went missing, so at the very least there are conflicting statements on that, timing-wise, even just exclusively going by shite the Daily Mail has published.

 

[wulfmoon]

I think its important to distinguish available evidence/public information from assumption here. Much of the public have now hypothesised murder in Gus’s case… even though there’s no indication of this yet.

Once that assumption is made, behaviours (like that of Josie’s) are going to be analysed and on occasion misinterpreted. (I am not exempt of course.)

Public speculation often ignores probability, context and psychology. This suggests preexisting bias and/or beliefs drive personal hypothesis.

You are correct in your analysis packetgravy and thank you for clarifying these key issues.
Regardless of what outcome the blame will go back to the relationship that exists and existed between Josie and Shannon and the collective perception. The ideal is to split the psychology of the blind narrative (controlled study) as against perceived collective dynamics and try to elevate and understand the 'true perspective'
Naturally our understanding is based on fact rather than the conflicted narratives from the press which is often well versed in this forum and correctly questioned by many members here which is a really good thing.