By LACHLAN MOORHEAD
RACHEL Shambrook’s voice trembles just slightly when the Narre Warren mother recalls the moment she was told her son Luke was alive.
But it’s the falter in Rachel’s voice which says so much more than words ever could.
“I stepped outside the tent and the policeman was just standing there and, fortunately, and I mean this in all sincerity, he didn’t give me too long to wonder why he was back again and just straight away he said ‘they’ve got him, and he’s OK’,” she said.
“If he’d given me any longer to think about it I would have been expecting, at that point, bad news.
“He had this look of sheer happiness on his face that finally he could come and say they’d found him.”
Luke’s smiling face has been broadcast worldwide since the 11-year-old was miraculously rescued after going missing in bushland near Lake Eildon for four nights over Easter.
On Wednesday a special function was held at Victoria’s Parliament House where Rachel and her husband, Tim, formally thanked the more than 100 people who helped search for Luke.
Premier Daniel Andrews was also at the event to praise those involved with the rescue effort.
Every Easter Luke and his family – Rachel, Tim, and his younger siblings Matthew and Lauren – stay with relatives and friends at the Candlebark camping area in the Lake Eildon National Park for the long weekend.
The Shambrooks arrived at the camping ground on Thursday afternoon and had breakfast with Luke the next day, but later on Friday morning the young boy took it upon himself to go on an adventure.
“He’s very familiar with the whole place and what we do there,” Rachel said.
“We have our standard set of walks that we routinely do because we love the place so much.
“Our best guess is he woke in the morning and started his normal routine of getting dressed and having breakfast outside the tent then it suddenly occurred to him, he hadn’t been for his walk.
“Our best guess, given that he can’t tell us why he left, is that he took it upon himself to go.”
Luke’s ordeal is a memory now but those four nights were the longest of Rachel and Tim’s lives.
His mother said one of the most difficult moments was calling out Luke’s name and hearing nothing back as Tim and Rachel continued to search for their child long after night had fallen.
“The first night and the last night were probably the hardest,” Rachel said.
“When we got to the night-time, there was that realisation that he was going to be out there, he was going to be by himself.
“We knew he wouldn’t have any food or water and when we sat down to tea and went to bed ourselves, that was when it really hit the hardest.
“And then the new day would start and simply because it was a new day there was that sense of, just maybe today.
“Then the next night came.”
But each morning Rachel and Tim woke again to search for Luke, drawing on their inner strength as much for Matthew, 10, and Lauren, 7, as for themselves.
Rachel, who has been pivotal in setting up the Casey Cardinia Sibling Support group, is passionate about looking after siblings of children with a disability.
“They (Matthew and Lauren) were very mindful of everything that was going on, we couldn’t shelter them from it completely and we didn’t want to but we were conscious they needed some sense of normality each day,” Rachel said.
And on the Monday hope was once again rekindled when Luke’s beanie was found.
The Shambrooks said they had been blown away by the number of volunteers who had given up their time to join the rescue effort, including friends from the Berwick Church of Christ and other networks in Casey, even strangers from throughout Victoria.
One man told Tim he hitched two rides from Warragul to help look for Luke.
Rachel, who was also involved heavily in the push to open the Specialist School in Officer, is still marvelling at Luke’s resilience, which saw his journey end safely in the care of doctors at the Royal Children’s Hospital.
While it’s nearly unfathomable to imagine what Rachel, Tim and their children have gone through at the start of this month, there may be a phrase that fits.
Next to the Shambrooks’ front door in Narre Warren is a plaque bearing three words.
“Home sweet home“.
