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Bush Legends: Carnarvon to celebrate extra special Christmas after Cleo Smith rescue

Little Cleo Smith, inadvertently now the face of Carnarvon, giggled openly as she swapped high-fives with her step-father Jake Gliddon after a low-key pub lunch in the Gascoyne town on Thursday. Her relaxed mother Ellie Smith sat with them as they went unbothered by other patrons at the Carnarvon Hotel. Somehow, just weeks after their lives were turned upside down when Cleo was allegedly abducted from a campsite at the local Blowholes tourist attraction, they looked every bit a normal, happy family. The scene reflected assertions from life-time locals that Carnarvon had moved on from the intense saga and tonight, they will celebrate the Christmas they needed to have like never before, after a year that has rollicked through sea catastrophes, crime concerns and of course, Cleo. When Santa roars into the Gascoyne town in the sidecar of a Harley Davidson motorcycle, it will ignite the annual festive party that was almost cancelled last year because of the coronavirus. It will allow the community spirit that united in front of a captivated nation and beyond in recent weeks, to bond on a vastly more social footing than the one required and sustained during the hunt for their little girl lost. Cleo was found safe and well after an antagonising 18-day search, with her alleged abductor Terence Kelly facing charges including forcibly stealing a child under 16. Locals say her heart-warming return to her family will add a special edge to the Christmas celebrations, but also claim the embattled town’s people are deserving of tributes that rarely come their way. “When Cleo went missing and the chips were really down, that’s when the people of this community shone brighter than ever,” said local hairdresser Lee-Anne Daly, who along with friends Nella Barrett and Dianne Ramirez kept the town’s Christmas party alive last year when it was to be canned by the Carnarvon Shire due to COVID-19 restrictions. Mrs Daly’s family has lived through a lot in Carnarvon since her grandparents Fred and Mabel Caunt arrived there from the small Wheatbelt town of Bonnie Rock decades ago. She spent some of her formative years at the historic Brick House Station, 15km north-east of Carnarvon and now owned by Andrew and Nicola Forrest. But she admitted nothing had gripped the local community quite like the disappearance of Cleo. And having Cleo’s cousin Angel as an employee at her main-street hair-dressing salon had intensified her ride through the ordeal. “I even get teary now thinking about it,” she said, explaining she and Angel were preparing to do hair for a wedding party on the morning Cleo went missing. “Then when they were putting out the flyers to say she was lost at the Blowholes, my heart just sank. It was so heart-wrenching and it seemed every day the goal posts were getting further and further apart.” Remarkably, the day Angel planned to come back to work was the day Cleo was found. A buoyant Angel returned later that day with her nails painted pink by her beautiful little cousin. “It was just such an amazing day, we cried and cried,” Mrs Daly said. “Until she was found, I don’t think you realised how low everyone was. It’s the cruelest thing I’ve ever, ever known. You were as low and then as high as you could ever be.” Mrs Daly said having a healthy and happy Cleo visit her salon with Ellie last Monday was a delight and also a reflection of how the community was moving on. “She’s just such a delightful little kid,” she said. “It was great to see her out and it was like nothing has really changed.” The site where Cleo went missing from was empty this week, but for the remains of a fire inside a circular rock pit, two used children’s glow sticks and a discarded pair of blue underpants. Its open positioning deep into the campsite gives stark insight into the brazenness of the alleged crime. And talking to those, including Mrs Daly, closely connected to the search for Cleo, revealed a palpable mix of fatigue and optimism. Justin Borg’s Coral Coast Helicopter Services immediately joined the hunt party after previously being engaged in two fatal sea mishaps and the search for missing prospector Trevor McDonald south of Meekatharra in the past few months. Mr Borg had been aerial mustering in the southern Murchison region when he was told of Cleo’s plight and immediately began coordinating an air search. He joined in on the third of four days of searching with two aircraft which covered 2125km over 25 flying hours. “It’s been a bit surreal, but our guys are all back to normal now and I think the town is back to normal,” Mr Borg said. “It’s a pretty resilient and tight-knit community and it doesn’t surprise me how normal things are so quickly afterwards. We’ve suffered quite a bit of loss this year with numerous tragic deaths and disappearances so it’s good to wrap the year up. “But the positivity off the back of Cleo being found has been really heartfelt and I think everybody here is just counting their blessings, especially those with children and grandchildren. I’m a parent myself, so you just find that little bit extra quality this year.” Carnarvon SES unit manager Elsa Alston fought back tears as she spoke of the search efforts of her committed team members, who sat together in an adjoining room on Wednesday night making decorations for a Christmas tree they will enter into a competition at the town party. The team of 26 volunteers includes an electrical engineer, mental health nurses, a gardener and child-care and social workers. Reflective of Carnarvon’s diverse community, there are people from the Philippines, Malaysia, India, Sri Lanka and New Zealand. “A lot of our crew were brand new and we’d only done land search and rescue (training) a month before,” Mrs Alston said of her team who walked up to 26km a day over six days for a total of 3500km over 2500 search hours. “I can hardly talk about it because it makes me cry, but when we finished up I told them how incredibly proud of them I was. They didn’t complain and they didn’t grizzle, even though they had prickles and they had snakes. “Carnarvon is a bit special like that with the amount of community spirit that comes out.” After assessing with Mrs Daly a room full of presents to be delivered to the town’s children by Santa at the street party, Mrs Barrett said the community – from volunteers, to the Shire and a wide range of businesses – had shown extraordinary generosity at a time Carnarvon needed it most. “Carnarvon has its down points, but I’ve been here all my life and I’m passionate about it,” said Carnarvon-born Mrs Barrett, whose father Paul Venner came to the town from Italy in 1950 and saved money for four years to bring her mother Cesarina over, too. “It’s a great community with great spirit and the party is a great way to celebrate that.” And despite rising concerns over local crime and fears of subsequent vigilantism spreading, Carnarvon Shire chief executive Andrea Selvey said the town’s business prospects were booming and good times were ahead. “The people are the heart and soul of this community and they stick together and that’s been very evident in the past few months,” Mrs Selvey said. “There is a buoyancy and an optimism about Carnarvon and people see a very bright future in capitalising on the amazing assets it has. And this will be such a wonderful Christmas here.” Mrs Daly said the regular negative publicity leveled at Carnarvon was “heartbreaking” and unfair. She said she banded with her friends to keep the annual Christmas party going to help make sure the town kept its spirits up. “You can’t cancel Christmas,” she said. “A lot of people come home to Carnarvon for Christmas so to have that spirit is so important. It’s about family and people coming together. “Growing up here, everyone gets involved and you just do what you do. It’s the people here who really make the place and I can’t imagine not living here.”

exclusiveBush Legends: Carnarvon to celebrate extra special Christmas after Cleo Smith rescue

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Bush Legends: Carnarvon to celebrate extra special Christmas after Cleo Smith rescue