Only in Queensland

A lone five year toddler knocks on your door in a small country locality in the wee hours. What do you do? Comfort her and call the Police or give her a feed, put her to bed and not even think that some mother must be frantic about the her whereabouts. A woman in Gladfield, a one-horse locality near Warwick, Queensland chose the later option and went to bed while State Emergency Service, Police and the parents were involved in a frantic search for the girl.

The child wandered into a Gladfield woman’s house at 1.30am, was given something to eat and somewhere to sleep, and was not reunited with her parents until after police searchers knocked on the woman’s door about 6.40am.

In what must be considered the most forgiving statement since Jesus on the Mount, the mother said she bore no malice and the Police only mentioned they would have preferred the woman to have called them. What was she thinking? That it was just a run-of-the-mill sleepover? I might add that the parents need to audit their ‘leaving truck stop’ procedures as well. I travelled all over Australia with five kids in the back and never left one anywhere – although I often threatened to do so. We even did one trip on Army posting from Townsville to Perth (New York to LA for Americans or London to Bhagdad for Europeans) and never left one kid at a truck stop or Motel.