A flight of crows circling over a gully, the barking of a dog, and the expert bushcraft of a black tracker led to the finding yesterday morning of Valmae Bridges, the 21 month old baby who wandered from her grand-parents’ home at Salisbury on Tuesday afternoon. After 18 hours in rugged, thickly timbered country, the child’s face, legs and arms had been badly bitten by mosquitoes and torn by undergrowth, but otherwise she was none the worse for her wanderings. Searchers found her sleeping peacefully beneath a tree a mile and a half from where she was last seen, but the tracks that had been followed indicated that she had walked at least five miles.
All the available mounted police and reserves from the police depot and suburban stations, aided by more than 100 civilians, had taken up the search within an hour after the child disappeared at 4pm on Tuesday [5 December 1933]. Led by Sergeant F. McGrath, of Stephens Police Station, the searchers were divided into separate parties, so that the surrounding country could be searched within a minimum of time. Among the first to take up the search was a black tracker, Jack McGrath, attached to the Oxley Police Station. He and a group of police and civilians followed the marks of the child’s tiny feet into the bush until darkness obliterated the tracks.
Police Tracker Jack McGrath, c1933.
Image courtesy of The Courier Mail.
Throughout the night the bush closer to the Beaudesert Road was scoured without avail, and at daybreak McGrath was again able to pick up tracks. These led the searchers to within a foot of the edge of a lagoon with water eight feet deep. The footprints were clearly discernible on each side of the pool, and at first it was thought that the child must have fallen into the water. Arrangements were being made to drag the lagoon, when the tracker’s keen eyes observed a flight of crows circling over a thickly-wooded gully beyond the grandparent’s home.
“Where you see crows you find baby” he told his companions, and finding in his words hope that the waterhole had not claimed a victim, they set out in the direction he indicated. Among other searchers on Tuesday evening were Mr and Mrs Alfred Cox who reside on the outskirts of Salisbury. They searched until darkness overtook them and while they were returning home they heard what sounded like a child’s cry in the bush some distance from the track. A brief search in the dark was unavailing, and they returned home. Yesterday morning they renewed their search, and shortly before 10 o’clock they were again going home to snatch a brief rest when their dog, Lonesome, ran barking into the bush.
They followed and found the missing child, her head pillowed in her arm, asleep beneath a tree. The police party met them as they were carrying the child towards the road. As the tracker had predicted, she had been found at the spot above which the crows were circling. She was speedily restored to her anxious parents. It was fortunate that the searchers’ success came when it did, for an hour later a thunderstorm with torrential rain, passed over the district.
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Article courtesy of The Courier Mail, Thursday 7 December 1933. The Police Museum is open 9am to 4pm Monday to Thursday and 10am to 3pm on the last Sunday of the month (Feb-Nov) and is located on the Ground Floor of Police Headquarters at 200 Roma Street, Brisbane. Contact: E: museum@police.qld.gov.au
“FROM the VAULT- Police Tracker’s Bushcraft” by the Queensland Police Service is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (BY) 2.5 Australia Licence. Permissions may be available beyond the scope of this licence. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/au/legalcode