Unsolved Mystery: 9-Year-Old Boy Vanishes in the Australian Bush

Patrick “Paddy” Hildebrand, a 9-year-old boy from Australia, went missing on a family bushwalking trip in Victoria’s Wilson’s Promontory National Park in 1987. Despite extensive searches by authorities and volunteers, Paddy was never found and his disappearance remains one of Australia’s most intriguing unsolved mysteries.

The Hildebrand family led by mother Christine, Paddy’s older brother Joe who is now a well-known journalist, and some of Paddy’s cousins set out on the bushwalking trip one morning in June. The family planned to walk the well-known Lilly Pilly Gully track located at the Wilsons Promontory National Park.

The track is just a small part that makes up the approximately 50,500 hectares (about 124,500 acres) National Park. The trail is known for its lush rainforest and diverse plant life, including the Lilly Pilly tree, which is where the track gets its name.

The trail is around 4km long and offers a moderate level of difficulty. It starts from the Telegraph Saddle carpark and takes hikers through the beautiful rainforest of the national park. While the track is moderate, it is well-marked and maintained, making it a safe hike for visitors of all ages and fitness levels.

Paddy was known to be an adventurous and energetic boy that loved bushwalking as later documented by his brother Joe in a book titled An Average Joe — My Horribly Abnormal Life, published in 2013.

As the family hiked through the lush, but dense bushland, only about ten minutes into their walk, Paddy wandered off ahead to explore the area, went round a bend, and that was the last time that they ever saw him. When his family called out for him, there was no answer. They searched the immediate area but he was nowhere to be found.

In what later may have been a fatal mistake, Christine, Paddy’s mother rounded the kids together, after some searching and calling out for her son, they retraced their steps back to the car, and once they had arrived, it was clear Paddy wasn’t there and so eventually the family made their way to the closest ranger station to raise the alarm.

The search for Paddy quickly escalated, with hundreds of volunteers and police joining in the effort. The searchers were winched into and out of Helicopters with one experienced searcher explaining that how by the 5th day the entire area was trampled, it had been marched across by people for days, over and over again.

It was reported that on the day there were hundreds of searchers, local volunteers, The State Emergency Service (SES), police, and later even Aboriginal trackers. The first day's search ended when the weather changed and darkness rolled in but then continued on into the following days and weeks. But despite the massive search, no trace of Paddy was found. The only clue was his yellow hat and a bed of ferns.

Paddy Hildebrand whilst energetic was disabled and suffered from epilepsy and it’s thought by some that he was undiagnosed with a type of autism too. A quote from Joe:

I never knew anything different…Once he pointed at the television when it was just on static and said that was what it was like inside his head.

As days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months, the search for Paddy was called off and the case slowly and dreadfully went cold.

The Hildebrand family was left with no answers and a lifetime of heartache. Despite the widespread media coverage, extensive investigation, and widespread search, all the search and rescue teams ever found was, eerily, the little boy’s yellow, plastic rain hat.

But for Paddy’s older brother Joe, the mystery of his brother’s disappearance never truly left him. As a journalist, he had spent years looking for answers, but so far no new information has come to light.

The official explanation is that Paddy got lost and died in the wilderness but the family and authorities have never found a body. The disappearance of Paddy Hildebrand remains one of Australia’s most mysterious unsolved cases.

“He must be there,” explained Shane Cunningham, a senior volunteer searcher with more than 25 years of experience.

We searched so hard and for so long. People put so much effort into it. We were loaded into helicopters, winched down onto the top of the ridge, marched down and then winched back up into the helicopter to do it all again. The vegetation was incredibly thick, but by the fifth day the entire area was completely trampled. We didn’t know what more we could do.

Shane was not the only one who couldn’t believe that the boy's body was never found. From The Australian newspaper:

One of the senior sergeants at the time had a son about the same age as Paddy, and used to go down there for years after the search finished and just tramp around in his own time. He had a bit of a breakdown because he couldn’t believe that with all those resources Paddy couldn’t be found.

How does this happen?

How does a short family wander through the bush turn into an insidious nightmare?

The poor mother was left completely heartbroken, the masses of searchers disbelieving, and a scenario played out all too often in the bush. People who go for a walk or a hike get lost. Some never return.

The pain and anguish experienced by the Hildebrand family are immeasurable.

Paddy may have had mental and physiological issues which perhaps made it so that he would not react and behave in the way that a typical search and rescue team would expect, sure, but how come his body has never been found? How come nothing has ever been found that would even offer a clue as to what happened that day?

There one minute, gone forever the next.

The lack of concrete evidence and the passing of time has made it difficult to investigate Paddy’s case. However, the authorities I can only assume are still open to new information that may help in solving the case.

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