Police searching for missing toddler Gus Lamont moved the hunt to a second Outback station last week as new details emerged about the vast landholding of his family and the disturbing events that previously unfolded there.
A cadaver dog, a police helicopter, and Taskforce Horizon detectives converged on Bullyaninnie Station near Oodla Wirra in the South Australian Outback on February 16.
The new search effort focused on an outhouse, an area of freshly poured concrete, and a ditch filled with abandoned cars.
It can now be revealed Gus’s grandparents, Shannon and Josie Murray, oversee that station as well as their own neighbouring Oak Park Station near Yunta, where the four-year-old vanished on the evening of September 27.
Bullyaninnie has been in Shannon Murray’s family for four generations, and it currently belongs to her widowed aunt Joy Betty, 92, who is now in a nursing home.
A local with a long association to Bullyaninnie told the Daily Mail ‘Joy’s niece looks after it now’, who is understood to be Gus’s grandmother, Shannon, 73.
Joy and her husband Ronald Betty inherited Bullyaninnie from Joy’s late father, Harry Jones, who also owned Oak Park Station and bequeathed that to his daughter Clair, Shannon’s mother.
Shannon and Josie became the owners of Oak Park following the deaths of Clair and her husband Vincent Pfeiffer, a former WWII prisoner of war.
The picturesque Bullyaninnie station became the focus of a new search
A NSW Police cadaver dog, brought in from interstate, scoured Bullyaninnie on Monday
Gus Lamont, four, who vanished on September 27, is now believed to be dead
Bullyaninnie is around 25km from Oak Park via a dirt track cross-country shortcut only used by the Murrays, and features a picturesque homestead, shearers’ quarters, and multiple stockyards.
However, it was the location of an notorious 2009 siege involving violent criminal Shane Andrew Robinson, who had stabbed a police officer on the Barrier Highway near Yunta before fleeing into the outback.
He broke into the Bullyaninnie homestead and held a person hostage there for several hours.
Later, he forced open a gun safe where 16 firearms were kept before the hostage saw their chance to escape and raised the alarm.
Officers surrounded the house in a chilling stand-off as they attempted to negotiate with Robinson before he shot himself.
In more recent years, Ms Betty proudly showed off her Outback home and her family’s heritage in the region in the April 2022 edition of South Australian government publication Across the Outback.
The then 88-year-old described her father Harry Jones – Gus’s great-great-grandfather – as being ahead of his time on environmental issues, fencing off swathes of overgrazed land for regeneration.
Ms Betty recalled being sent to boarding school in Terowie at age four, the same age as her great-great nephew Gus was in 2025.
Joy Betty, then 88, was pictured at Bullyaninnie in a government publication
Joy Betty is seen wearing white in the top picture; Clair Pfeiffer, in green, is Shannon’s mum
Task force detectives inspected one of the buildings on Bullyaninnie Station, near Oodla Wirra
She said her parents wanted her big sister Clair, then in Year Seven and who would go on to become Shannon’s mother, to ‘help break her in’.
She described the harsh terrain of the region – where police now believe they may find Gus’s body – as a drought-stricken expanse.
‘The 1940s were hard years and really windy. It would pick up the country and blow it away,’ she said.
‘Some mornings you would wake up and see the silhouette of your head on the pillow, it was that dusty.’
Ms Betty married Ronald in 1955, raised merino sheep and regenerated native plants at Bullyaninnie.
She recalled finally getting electricity in 1985, and described airconditioning as ‘game changing’ in an area where 35C-plus days are the norm in summer.
Her husband died in 2002 of an unknown cause, but before entering an aged care facility, Ms Betty’s wild peach pies were legendary in the district.
Ms Betty’s last known public words about the property were: ‘I just hope that I will leave a better place than when we took over.’
Joy and Clair’s dad was Harry Jones, who is pictured in the 1950s
Shannon Murray is Joy Betty’s niece, and is believed to be overseeing her property
Police scoured Bullyaninnie in the latest renewed searches for evidence relating to Gus’s disappearance after it became clear the Murrays had access to the estate.
With their property empire – which might one day have become Gus’s – now known to be much larger than just Oak Park Station, the search area widened considerably.
The new police search did not yield any evidence relating to the missing child, but police have vowed to maintain a presence in the area in pursuit of finding Gus’s fate.
They have also zeroed in on the Pualco Conservation Park, which borders Murray family land.
Detectives launched the hunt on Bullyaninnie on the day they charged Josie Murray with firearms offences which are said to be unrelated to Gus’s disappearance.
Police allege they found she possessed a prohibited firearm sound suppressor and will face Peterborough Magistrates Court on May 6.
Josie Murray was arrested on an unrelated weapons offence on Monday
Gus’s parents Jessica Murray and Joshua Lamont are not suspects
Josie Murray (pictured) and her wife Shannon have now retained lawyers
The charges came after police declared Gus’s disappearance a major crime on February 5, after finding no evidence that the youngster had simply wandered off into the outback before dinner.
Gus was reportedly last seen by Shannon Murray, playing in a sandpile at Oak Park around 5pm on AFL Grand Final day, but when she went to call him inside, he was gone.
It sparked the largesy missing person search in South Australian history.
Police seized a vehicle, a motorbike and electronic goods from Oak Park Station in January and said in February that up to two members of Gus’s family have now stopped cooperating with police.
They believe Gus is dead, possibly accidentally, but detectives say they have a suspect who may have been involved in his death.
However detectives stressed they have completely ruled out Gus’s parents, Jessica Murray and Joshua Lamont, as possible suspects.
Police said they had found ‘inconsistencies’ in statement details and the timeline provided by family members.
Josie and Shannon Murray have since retained separate lawyers, which is not unusual in these circumstances.
This week SA Police Commissioner Grant Stevens vowed to continue to investigate the death and said police would launch renewed searches in the area.
SA Police chief Grant Stevens vowed to use every resource to find the little boy
The Murrays own the sprawling Oak Park sheep station, 45km south of Yunta
‘Adjoining properties including the national park will in all likelihood be a part of our investigations as we move forward,’ he said on Wednesday.
‘We’ll use every resource available to us if it will contribute to solving the disappearance of Gus Lamont.
‘I think it’s reasonably foreseeable that we will be visiting Oak Park quite frequently over the coming months as we continue our investigation, as well as visiting surrounding locations in the vicinity of the residence.’
