IT WAS the tiny footprints and paw prints in the sand which stuck in Sally Pratley’s mind as she dozed in and out of a restless sleep on a roadside at Nambucca Heads last night.
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Her partner Leif O'Brien and two of their children had stopped searching for little Riley Martin at 1am and returned to the family van. They arrived at Nambucca about 10.30pm on Wednesday, having made the 70km trip from Kempsey to help search for the missing four-year-old.
The family resumed their search at 5am in the same place they had been drawn to the night before while walking along the beach.
It was two hours later that they found little Riley, lying in dense bushland nearby.
“We parked the car and went into the bushland from the roadside. I started wondering how we would get back out,” she said. “If we could get lost so easily, I wondered how lost he could be. Just as we were moving forward we saw this massive drop, and I thought ‘oh my God’.
“We looked down to see if we could see anything down there, we really didn’t know what to expect. We thought it was too dangerous and maybe we could go back to the road, down the hill and come across the bush.” Ms Pratley said it was then when they turned around to walk back to the roadside, they heard a dog bark.
“We heard a man call out “dog” and we heard him calling for the boy, so we just ran probably 50 to 70 metres from the road and Leif almost stood on him.” Ms Pratley said the couple found Riley not far from where they heard the sound of dogs barking and had seen small footprints in the sand the night before.
The little boy, she said, was terrified, “freezing cold”, suffering scratches and was dirty from his night in the bush. He also had a sizeable tick attached to his neck.
“He didn’t talk when we found him, he just looked at us,” Ms Pratley said. “Both of us thought he was unconscious but as Leif picked him up he turned his head and looked at us - we were both so relieved.
“We were saying, ‘it’s OK, we’re going to take you back to your mummy, you’re a good boy’ we gave him all the reassurance we could.”
It wasn’t long after the family returned to their van that Riley’s great grandparents arrived with a blanket for the boy, and Ms Pratley contacted triple-0.
She offered Riley sips of water, but she said he was most taken to a packet of Shapes biscuits she had in her bag.
“When he first looked at us, he was terrified but then he really cuddled in to Leif,” Ms Pratley said. “He just melted into him. We are so relieved he’s OK and back with his family.
“When the SES and police came and put him in the rescue car, they asked us to follow them around to the family.
“By the time we got out of the car his mother already had her baby in her arms. I ran over and hugged her. We embraced … and cried.”
Back at their Collombatti property this morning, Ms Pratley said the phone has just not stopped ringing.
The respite dance teacher and teacher’s aide and her Australian Postal worker husband share eight children between them and said they only hoped if one of their children went missing – that someone else would do the same for them.