When South Australia Police abruptly announced a press conference at the remote Oak Park sheep station last week amid the search for missing boy Gus Lamont, my heart skipped a beat.
Could this be it? Have they finally found something after eight months and 11 searches of the sprawling outback property near Yunta?
Taskforce Horizon had been scouring the creek beds for days, hoping that recent rainfall gushing through the parched landscape may have washed up a clue as to the four-year-old's whereabouts after his disappearance on September 27 last year.
But tuning in to the press conference last Thursday, it was immediately clear that hopes of finding the curly-haired little boy were all but lost.
No evidence was uncovered, and SAPOL Major Crime boss Detective Superintendent Darren Fielke described the search for Gus as a 'tough job' that was 'relentless [and] demoralising' - but insisted they would not give up.
'One of the grandparents of Gus remains a suspect in this investigation,' Detective Superintendent Fielke said - despite the family's electronics, a vehicle and motorbike being sent for forensic testing in January and turning up nothing.
In the end, the Adelaide media contingent was dragged 370km to Yunta for an update that really could have been an email.
Still, it had a purpose of sorts.
Gus Lamont's parents Jessica and Joshua shared this image of their missing son
SAPOL Major Crime boss Darren Fielke appeared haunted by the case last Thursday
Task Force Horizon officers scoured creek beds near Oak Park station last week
Detective Superintendent Fielke clearly wanted the public to know they were still trying - but in my years as a journalist I know these kinds of press conferences are a common sign of police desperation in an investigation that is going nowhere.
He wore a haunted look every crime reporter recognises - one that says: I may never find out what happened to this child. The parents will never hold their baby again.
For him, this may well be 'The Case' - the one that haunts every senior police officer involved well into retirement.
Detective Superintendent Fielke also used the presser, held by the Murray family's ramshackle shearing sheds near the main homestead where Gus was last seen, to sternly warn the assembled media not to ask questions about the suspect.
It was an extraordinary scolding from a police force that had boldly - and, arguably, recklessly - announced at an earlier media briefing that a family member was in police crosshairs but not specifically naming which one.
They continue to insist that Gus' parents, Jessica Murray and Joshua Lamont, are not suspects, meaning the spotlight has been trained on Jessica's parents, Shannon and Josie Murray, who have since retained high-powered lawyers, which is common in these cases.
Presumably the 'strategy' behind that baffling decision has so far proven utterly fruitless. What's more, it appears to have torn the family apart, with Jessica fleeing the farm in January for a suburban home in Adelaide.
Josie and Shannon have not been seen in public since the Daily Mail witnessed them holding a business meeting in a Peterborough cafe late last year.
Fleur Tiver, a lifelong friend of Shannon's, said the couple was 'bewildered' by the turn of events.
Jessica and Joshua are desperately waiting for any clues as to their son's whereabouts
Gus' grandparent Josie Murray has remained stonily silent on the investigation
Shannon Murray's lawyer said she is supporting Josie and hoping to find Gus
Shannon's lawyer, Casey Isaacs, said in March, 'She is still supporting [Gus' other grandparent] Josie, co-operating through her solicitors, and hoping to find Gus, hoping that some information comes to light soon.'
From her life partner Josie, a transgender woman who will face court in Adelaide next week over an unrelated firearms charge for possessing an illegal silencer, there has been stony silence.
There has been a relentless appetite from the public for information on Gus - and rightly so. Children do not simply disappear.
It is hardly surprising that Australians are desperate for any information. And the media has been trying to give it to them - despite the constant stonewalling by police and the simple tyranny of distance given that most newsrooms covering this case are based in Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney.
Yunta is in the middle of nowhere, with a population of 60, and the Murrays kept to themselves even before the missing boy propelled them into the global spotlight.
Still, my gut tells me that some questionable recent press coverage is another sure sign that Gus will never be seen again.
Brits will recall the endless 'Maddie sightings' splashed across the Daily Express ad nauseum after three-year-old Madeleine McCann vanished while on a family holiday with her parents in Portugal in 2007.
All were utter nonsense.
Australia had its own version of that last week courtesy of Channel Seven, which ran a story about absurd reports of sightings of little blond boys as far afield as Syria and Bali. They have all been discounted by investigators.
Jessica Murray has fled to a home in Adelaide with her younger son, Ronnie
There have been reported - and discounted - sightings of a blond boy in Bali and Syria
But the coverage no doubt fuelled countless dinner-table discussions around South Australia, where many remain convinced that Gus was abducted despite clear police insistence that is not the case.
My two cents: that is incredibly unlikely. Any would-be abductors face a 45-minute bash down a rutted dirt road that would have thrown dust plumes visible for kilometres - and well within sight of the few neighbours close to Oak Park Station.
Given the only possible sign of Gus since he vanished was a solitary small boot print in the dust a few hundred metres from the homestead, which may not even be relevant, there was always a sinking feeling the investigation would end this way.
Police have scoured mineshafts and even drained a dam in the search for him. It is fair to say not a single stand of saltbush went unsearched or dusty Outback stone unturned, and still... nothing.
South Australia is a state haunted by missing persons, mostly children.
Investigators have scoured mineshafts near Oak Park Station to no avail
SA Police are also draining Blue Dam in Andamooka in their search for a missing mum
Trisha Graf vanished from the outback SA town before Christmas and is feared dead
The Beaumont children vanishing from Glenelg and Kirste Gordon and Joanne Ratcliffe disappearing during a footy match at the Adelaide Oval are etched into the psyche of locals.
Not to mention a more recent missing-persons case that Detective Superintendent Fielke is also overseeing in terrain eerily similar to where Gus was last seen.
Police have this week returned to Andamooka - a dusty opal-mining town in the state's north - to search for clues as to the whereabouts of Trisha Graf, a 41-year-old mum who disappeared two weeks before Christmas.
She is feared dead.
Police are scouring hundreds of mineshafts and draining the Blue Dam, near where Ms Graf's car was found abandoned.
The scene is eerily similar to the bleak sights seen 500km south-east of Andamooka, in Yunta, since September.
The names Gus Lamont and Trisha Graf feel destined to join the Beaumont children and the Oval abductions in South Australia's vault of dark, unsolved mysteries.
I hope I'm wrong.
But after following this case from the beginning - watching the investigation stall and knowing this state’s grim history of people vanishing without trace - it is hard to escape the fear that little Gus’s story will never have an ending.
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