NEW LEAD 100KM AWAY: An eyewitness in Port Augusta claims to have seen a little boy matching Gus Lamont’s description in the backseat of an unfamiliar car. Detectives are treating this as a potential breakthrough — but time is slipping away fast. 🚔⏳

NEW LEAD 100KM AWAY: Eyewitness Sighting in Port Augusta Ignites Fresh Urgency in Gus Lamont Disappearance

 The red dust of South Australia’s Outback has long held its secrets, but today, a whisper from 100 kilometers west—a fleeting glimpse in the rearview of a passing car—has detectives racing against the ticking clock in the search for four-year-old August “Gus” Lamont. In Port Augusta, a coastal gateway where the desert meets the Spencer Gulf, an eyewitness came forward late Wednesday with a claim that has shifted the ground beneath the investigation: a little boy, curly blond hair tousled against a car window, matching Gus’s description to the curl, spotted in the backseat of an unfamiliar sedan. “It was him—or close enough to chill the blood,” the woman told police, her voice trembling in a statement released by South Australia Police. As the Major Crime Branch treats this as a potential breakthrough, mobilizing forensics teams and highway patrols, the stark reality looms: 12 days since Gus vanished, time is slipping away fast, and every lead feels like a last gasp in a wilderness that devours the vulnerable.

The sighting, reported around 4 p.m. on October 8 near the bustling BP roadhouse on the Stuart Highway—Port Augusta’s artery for weary travelers and freight haulers—describes a dusty white Toyota Camry, circa 2010s, with tinted windows cracked just enough for the boy’s face to peer out. The witness, a 52-year-old nurse named Elaine Hargrove who was refueling her Subaru after a shift at the Whyalla Hospital, locked eyes with the child for “five, maybe seven seconds” during a red light at the intersection. “Blond curls, big hazel eyes, maybe four or five—looked lost, thumb in mouth like my grandkids do when they’re scared,” Hargrove recounted to 7NEWS from her Port Augusta home, her hands still shaking. “The driver was a man, mid-40s, bearded, sunglasses on even in the shade. He accelerated hard when the light changed, heading north toward the Flinders Ranges.” No license plate—Hargrove’s dashcam was off—but police have flooded the area with CCTV trawls, pulling footage from service stations, motels, and the nearby Leigh Creek Road turnoff.

This lead emerges from the ashes of a search that has scorched hearts across Australia. Gus, the “adventurous little tacker” with a Minions obsession and a shovel for a scepter, was last seen at 5 p.m. on September 27, knee-deep in a dirt mound outside his grandparents’ Oak Park Station homestead, 40 kilometers south of Yunta. Thirty minutes later—dinner called, twilight falling—he was gone, erased by the 60,000-hectare labyrinth of spinifex, saltbush, and sheer drops into forgotten mine shafts. What unfolded was a Herculean effort: 200 souls at its peak, SES crews slashing through thorns, ADF choppers humming thermal scans, cadaver dogs questing scents in 35°C (95°F) hell. Drones mapped 50,000 hectares, divers plumbed dams, trackers like Jason O’Connell logged 1,200 kilometers on foot—yet yields mocked their grit: a red shoe caked in ochre, tire tracks veering highway-ward, a blue blanket snagged in rocks five kilometers out, faint footprints in creek sands that Bella the Lab refused to abandon. Each, in turn, crumbled under forensics: the shoe’s DNA inconclusive, tracks too fresh for station vehicles, prints too adult or wind-worn, the blanket’s fibers generic.

By Day 6, ground ops suspended—”We’ve covered it all,” Assistant Commissioner Ian Parrott intoned, his face a rictus of resolve—the mission morphed into a recovery probe laced with abduction shadows. Medical clocks ticked merciless: a four-year-old’s 48-hour dehydration window long shattered, nights dipping to 2°C (36°F) where hypothermia claims the unwary. O’Connell’s words haunted briefings: “Zero evidence he’s on that property. Vultures, foxes—they don’t miss. He’s taken.” The Barrier Highway, that desolate spine from Yunta to Port Augusta, became suspect: sparse traffic of wool trucks and grey nomads, but whispers of drifters and darker opportunists. A trucker’s tip of a “blond kiddo” at a Copley servo fizzled; deepfakes and hoax sightings—AI horrors of Gus bundled into vans—clogged lines, earning Parrott’s ire: “Armchair bollocks hurts the real work.”

Port Augusta’s lead, though, crackles with viability. At 100 kilometers west— a two-hour drive over gibber plains and salt lakes—it’s the first off-property sighting police deem “credible,” per a Major Crime statement Thursday dawn. Detectives from Adelaide’s child exploitation unit jetted in, sketching composites from Hargrove’s recall: the man “scruffy, like a miner off-shift,” the boy “pale, no smile, clutching a toy truck.” Highway cams from the Augusta Highway junction, cross-referenced with ANPR (automatic number plate recognition), pinged three white Camrys in the window; owners traced by noon, two cleared (locals, alibis ironclad), the third a ghost plate from interstate. “We’re treating this as breakthrough potential,” Parrott said in a Peterborough scrum, flanked by profiler Gary Jubelin, the ex-William Tyrrell lead whose haunted eyes know this drill. “Port Augusta’s a hub—trucks, tourists, transients. If Gus hitched that road, this is the funnel.” Jubelin, in a Today exclusive, nodded to patterns: “Opportunistic grabs in remotes—70% vehicles. Time’s the thief here; 12 days, he’s either gold or gone.”

The ripple hits Yunta like a dust storm. The town’s 60 souls—pub walls ribboned yellow, cafes slinging free snags to lingering vols—buzz with guarded fire. “Finally, a thread off this bloody station,” muttered barman Tom Reilly over a flat white, his drone the one that snagged the blanket. #BringGusHome erupts anew on X, 70,000 posts by evening: “Port Augusta sighting—follow the white Camry!” one viral thread roars, blending hope with horror stories of Beaumont echoes. The Leave A Light On for Gus campaign, birthed by Leave A Light On Inc., reignites: porch bulbs from Port Pirie to Perth, a luminous net against the void. GoFundMe swells to $180,000, earmarked for private eyes and psychic tips (one “vision” of Gus near the gulf, debunked but devoured).

For the Lamonts, it’s a dagger of maybe amid the numb. Mick, Gus’s dad—a shearer’s hands now idle on the homestead veranda—hasn’t spoken since his Day 3 raw plea: “He’s my spark—find him.” Sarah, mum, pores over sighting sketches till dawn, her Peppa Pig mug cold. Grandparents Ellen and Jack, Outback iron forged in station fires, consent to every prod: property digs, polygraphs, family trees dissected for custody “clashes” trolls feast on. “They’re victims, full stop,” Parrott shields, slamming online venom—abuse myths, hoax bundles—that twists their grief. A family friend, Royce Player, relays over crackling line: “This Port Augusta thing? It’s oxygen. They’re clinging, praying it’s curls, not coincidence.” Cleared early, they endure the glare, hearts tattooed with Gus’s Play-Doh grin.

As Thursday’s sun claws the horizon, the pivot accelerates. Forensics vans rumble Stuart Highway verges, K9s sniff service stops, profilers map drifter dens from Whyalla to Woomera. Drones lift off Port Augusta foreshore, thermal eyes scouring dunes where cars vanish into scrub. Parrott, gripping podium like lifeline, vows: “Time slips, but we don’t. This lead? We’re on it like hounds— for Gus, alive, hurt, whatever. No stone, no shadow unturned.” Peterborough Mayor Ruth Whittle rallies kin: “Out here’s where hope hides—in the hard miles.” Cafes hum with yellow bows, Yunta’s pub a vigil vault.

Beyond the gulf’s gleam, Australia aches. Port Augusta’s white Camry ghosts the feed, a specter on the highway of what-ifs. Was it Gus, thumb-tucked terror in tinted glass? A mirage of every lost child’s face? Or the break that shatters the Outback’s silence? In the fading light, with lights ablaze against the encroaching dark, one truth endures: for little Gus Lamont, the search isn’t suspended—it’s surged. And in this land of endless red, surges can unearth miracles. Or ghosts. Time, that cruel companion, waits for no one—but today, it bends to the hunt.