Published in the Weekend Australian Magazine, August 2013
Photo credit: Megan Slade
It’s a peaceful place in Victoria’s Wilsons Promontory, ideal for family walks, a back-before-lunch kind of stroll. I walked this path earlier this year with my family. Not far into the walk I came across a rock which bears a simple, bronze inscription. It was a memorial to a nine-year-old boy named Patrick (Paddy) Hildebrand, who on this spot in 1987 left the track and walked into the woods.
Young Paddy had gone on ahead of his family about 10 minutes into the walk. The scene: a mother, calling out for her son to wait. No reply. Louder calls. Running, shouting, rising panic, retracing steps to the car park, and finally a sprint to the nearby ranger station for help. A massive search was assembled. A hat believed to belong to Paddy was found, as well as a bed of ferns, but after a week of combing the area Christine Hildebrand drove away without her son. No trace of Paddy was ever found. He had vanished into the woods…
