Community & Business
20 June, 2025
‘Little boy lost’ now with SES
Eric Taylor, who went missing in the Far North Queensland bush for five days as a toddler, is now serving with as a Group Leader with the the State Emergency Services, the organisation that rescued him.
Eric went missing in July 1988 from the Taylor family home at Adams Gully, 30 kilometres south of Cooktown, wearing only a nappy and a singlet.
The 23-months-old toddler survived in the harsh far-northern weather by eating insects and wild leaves for 95 hours, in tropical bush which contained wild pigs, pythons, crocodiles, steep ridges, fast-flowing streams and thick under-growth.
A five-day search involving hundreds of volunteers found him naked, in scrub, 400 metres up Mount Leswell by SES volunteers, 1.5 kilometres from his home.
“Eric met the searchers with a grin and stretched out his arms for a cuddle,” reported one newspaper.
Incredibly, Eric was missing for longer in the bush than the original “Little Boy Lost” Stephen Walls from Guyra in Northern New South Wales.
Eric’s happy disposition and good health astonished doctors and police, who were at a loss to explain how this little boy was returned from the bush with only dehydration and grazes and scratches.
A paediatrician at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Brisbane speculated at the time that Eric must have had some intake of water.
Parents Paul and Mary Anne Taylor were jubilant but would later leave the area due to constant speculation and gossip over their son’s disappearance.
Mary Anne herself speculated that Eric could only have made it up the mountain after being abducted and carried.
Whatever the case, Eric would not have been found without the hundreds of volunteers who came from all-over North Queensland to look for him.
An SES crew, led by a man from Kuranda, named John Goss, included a man named Bob Harlow from Bloomfield, and an apprentice boilermaker from Weipa were the first to find Eric.
The subsequent rescue debrief at the Cook Shire Hall involved the SES Far Northern Region Co-ordinator and the Director of the SES in Queensland.
Eric joined the SES in 2014, on the suggestion of a friend who was a member, and is now the Group Leader at Goombungee.
Last week, he attended a handover of equipment from Powerlink (see Page 3 report).
Goombungee SES meets Monday nights from 6 to 8pm on the corner of Mocatta Street and Pechey-Maclagan Road, while Oakey’s SES meets on Monday nights from 5pm to 7pm at 20 Lorrimer Street.
