Mum’s tears for missing Cleo

THE family of missing fouryear-old Cleo Smith have described the terrifying moment they realised she had vanished from their tent – and their certainty she would not have wandered off by herself.

In their first interview since the little girl disappeared from the tent she was sharing with her family, Cleo’s mum, Ellie Smith, said when she awoke at 6am, the tent was open.

“The zipper was open and she was gone,” she said.

Cleo had been sleeping on a mattress next to the cot of her baby sister, Isla.

“The tent was completely open. I turned around to Jake and said ‘She’s gone’.” The search for Cleo is now in its fourth day after she was last seen about 1.30am on Saturday inside the tent at the Blowholes campsite in Macleod, about 70km north of Carnarvon in Western Australia.

Looking exhausted from their four-day vigil, Ms Smith and her partner, Jake Gliddon, pleaded for anyone who might have seen something to report it to police.

They said the past few days had been “horrendous”.

Speaking through tears, Ms Smith said Cleo was not the sort of child to wander off, and she would have asked for her mother’s help to unzip her one-piece sleeping suit.

“She’s lazy when it comes to walking,” she said. “She’d never leave the tent alone.”

Ms Smith said as soon as they realised Cleo was missing, they searched for her on foot and then by car, before calling police.

“We haven’t really slept,” she said.

“I guess the worst part is we can’t do anything more.

“We sit and watch the sand dunes and think she’s going to run down it and back into our arms – but we’re still waiting.”

WA Police Inspector Jon Munday said Cleo’s disappearance was “really, really concerning”, and described the complex case as “a mystery we’re trying to unravel”.