‘OUR FAMILY IS WHOLE AGAIN'

Cleo Smith’s beautiful smile was the answer Australia had been hoping for since she vanished from her parents’ tent

- Phillip Koch

My name is Cleo.” Those were the four words that left hardened police in tears of relief after finding the four-year-old, safe and well, in a house just a seven-minute drive from her home in the remote coastal town of Carnarvon, WA.

Every parent’s worst nightmare finally ended for mum Ellie Smith when her daughter was returned to her loving arms after 18 agonising days of searching and intense police work led to her miracle rescue, following her abduction last month.

Upon seeing her mum, Cleo simply called out “Mummy!” and reached out her arms for a hug in a heartbreaking reunion many feared may never happen. “Our family is whole again,” an ecstatic Ellie wrote in a heartfelt Instagram post.

When Ellie and Cleo’s stepdad Jake Gliddon let close family and friends know their “beautiful girl is home”, one close friend, who was woken at 4.50am last Wednesday by the incredible news from Ellie, said “it is nothing short of a miracle”.

The harrowing abduction case had Australia and the world on tenterhooks as police launched a massive ground and air search to find the preschooler, who vanished in the dead of night from her parents’ tent at remote campsite Blowholes, 60km north of Carnarvon on October 16.

LITTLE GIRL GONE

Cleo was safe and well in her sleeping bag beside the cot where her eightmonth-old sister Isla was fast asleep when she woke and asked for a glass of water at 1.30am. By 6am she had vanished. Ellie says she could never have undone the zipper herself.