30/03/2026
A story that resonates, relating to my mother's story in my book, when a group of children from Moorooka Camp, including my mother, became lost in the vastness of Toohey Forest, the local police called in the Aboriginal Trackers, who found the children. 🙏
In 1864, the parents of three small children in Australia felt a soul-crushing despair that no mother or father should ever know. Their children had walked into the dense Mallee scrub and simply vanished into the brush.
Isaac, Jane, and little Frank had been missing for days in a wilderness known for swallowing people whole. The local search parties had spent a week scouring the dirt, but hope was fading fast with every sunset.
Then a massive thunderstorm rolled across Victoria, washing away every footprint and every scent from the earth. The official search was called off, and the community prepared for a funeral instead of a homecoming.
But a local man refused to give up and sought out a Wotjobaluk man known as Dick-a-Dick. He was a master of the land, joined by two other Indigenous trackers named Jerry and Fred.
The white settlers saw only mud and broken twigs, but Dick-a-Dick saw a map of survival. He saw a bent leaf. He saw a slight indentation in the sand. Every minute detail told him a story of where the children were heading.
They tracked the trio for miles through the brutal terrain. They saw their exhaustion. They saw their fear. They saw their path toward a miracle.
After nine days in the wild, the trackers found the children huddled together, starving and on the verge of death. Jane had used her dress to keep her little brothers warm, a small act of bravery that kept them alive until the experts arrived.
Dick-a-Dick was hailed as a hero across the region and was later given the title King Richard. His ability to read the earth when everyone else saw nothing literally saved three lives from the brink of tragedy.
Today, the story of these trackers reminds us that the land holds secrets only some are wise enough to hear. Their legacy is one of skill, persistence, and the ultimate rescue against impossible odds.
He saw the tracks. He saw the path. He saw the hope that others had abandoned.
Sources: National Library of Australia / Victoria State Records
