Family camped 100m from Cleo Smith share details of the day
Image: Instagram
A family-of-seven who were camping less than 100 metres from where Cleo Smith vanished have come forward and broken their silence about their ‘scarred’ and heartbreaking stay at their site.
It has now been over two weeks since the four-year disappeared from her family’s tent at the Blowholes campsite near Carnavorn in Western Australia in the early hours of October 16.
Detectives joined the huge police operation dedicated to Cleo’s disappearance, and spent Sunday going door-to-door in the young girl’s hometown Carnarvon as the search continues.
Queensland couple Rob and Kira Prince were camping at the Blowholes at the time and describe their stay as something they’ll never forget ‘for all the wrong reasons.’
The couple are travelling around Australia in a campervan with their five children, which they’ve been documenting on the Our Aussie Adventure Facebook page.
The family uploaded photos of their time at the Quobba Blow Holes and shared a police flyer regarding Cleo’s disappearance.
‘This camp was beautiful with both rugged cliff faces with powerful waves and lagoon like beaches and the blowholes were absolutely incredible,’ the family posted on Sunday.
‘Unfortunately our stay here was scarred by the disappearance of Cleo Smith from a tent 100m from our site.’
‘With four-year-olds of our own this was truly terrifying and heartbreaking. It is a day we will never forget – for all the wrong reasons.’
‘While we physically moved on from here once the campground closed, emotionally we are very much still there longing for a positive outcome for Cleo and her family.’
The family told The West Australian they've spoken to police 'a number of times.'
Detectives door-knocked a number of homes along the North West Coastal Highway in the North Plantations, 5km from Cleo's hometown on Sunday.
It comes as Cleo's frantic mum issued yet another public appeal on social media for her daughter to come home. 'My kind hearted baby girl mummy wants you home,' Ellie Smith wrote in an Instagram story on Sunday.
Ms Smith also posted a missing persons image of Cleo urging anyone with information to contact police.
She and Cleo's stepfather Jake Gliddon have been ruled out by police of having have had any involvement in the girl's disappearance.
Earlier on Sunday, the owner of a shack which captured Cleo’s voice on its CCTV system has opened up about the 'panicked' moments after the little girl vanished. Dave Sadecky handed over the crucial CCTV of little Cleo to police which placed her at the campsite on the night before she vanished.
The motion sensitive camera is installed inside their beach shack which was just 20 metres away from the family tent and takes a wide-angled photo of everyone who enters or leaves it. The camera captures audio and images from inside a painted wooden box with a glass front and is quite hidden from those passing by.
When Mr Sadecky and his wife learnt of the news surrounding the four-year-old, they immediately jumped on their quad bikes to join the search. 'I didn't know the ins and outs of what was going on but everyone was panicked,' Mr Sadecky told The West Australia.
'People dropped everything and came to help … they were everywhere on Saturday like ants — it's not a normal sight.'
The couple ended up scouring the area for 10 hours on the day Cleo was last seen. She had woken up at 1.30 am on the Saturday to ask her mother Ellie for a sip of water but when her parents woke again at about 6am, she was gone.
'Everyone was emotional, people were clearly stressed and anxious but wanted to help. We've never had anything like this happen before. We're there every other weekend, we're kicking ourselves we weren't there that night,' Mr Sadecky said.
He said the campsite would now be 'tainted' from what happened, a local at Blowholes himself.
He added there was a tight-knit community in the area and that often people would leave their doors unlocked. Meanwhile, a close family friend of Cleo's mother Ellie Smith and stepdad Jake Gliddon said detectives are not wanting to give them any 'false hope'.
'There's nothing worse than saying, ''We're going to find her'', or, ''We think we've got the person'', and then they don't have the person or they don't find her,' the friend told The West.
It comes after it was revealed detectives in the 100-strong taskforce had responded to 200 potential sightings of Cleo in the two weeks since she disappeared.
'Unfortunately all of those have proved unfruitful,' Detective Superintendent Rob Wilde said.
'That's been national as well, other policing jurisdictions have helped us and followed those leads through for us, so we're very grateful for that.'
While none of the leads have been accurate yet, he is still calling on the public to continue searching for Cleo and reporting any potentially useful information.