Sunday History Photo / SA

The morning of Australia Day (26th January) 1966 was already hot in Adelaide, with the temperature due to peak at almost 40°C. Jim Beaumont, a linen goods salesman, wondered whether to go to work or go swimming with his children. Work on this day meant a two hour drive to Snowtown to see some customers. Staying home and taking his children to the beach sounded more appealing. Being a good salesman, however, Mr Beaumont decided that he'd better see his customers. It was a decision he would regret for the rest of his life.
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The children left their home at 109 Harding Street, Somerton Park, on the corner with Peterson Street, at 10am. They were catching the bus to Glenelg. It was only a short distance and they could have ridden their bicycles. Being a hot day, however, it seemed more sensible to catch the bus. It was understood by the children that they would return home on the noon bus. There was no way they could be confused about the time because the clock tower at Glenelg was highly visible. Mrs Beaumont gave Jane eight shillings and sixpence for expenses 78.
The children having left for the beach and her husband gone to see potential customers, Mrs Beaumont visited a friend. She returned before the noon bus arrived, and was waiting at the bus stop. The children were not on the bus. She didn't consider this serious as the children could have decided to walk home, which they had done before. Or they could have missed it, and would be on the 2pm bus instead. Some friends visited and Mrs Beaumont didn't worry for the moment.
The children did not return on the 2pm bus, and Mrs Beaumont began to feel uneasy. She could have gone to look for the children but their route home could equally take them down Moseley Street, Partridge Street or Brighton Road. She could very easily miss them, so it was best to wait.
The children did not return on the 3pm bus, and if Mrs Beaumont was uneasy before, she must have been distinctly worried now. Jim Beaumont returned home early (his customers had not been available) and when his wife explained what had happened, he immediately went out searching for his children. He drove to the beach, searching, and was home again by 3:30pm. He picked up his wife and returned to the beach, and kept searching. The children were finally reported missing to the police at 7:30pm. Jim Beaumont stayed out all night, still searching.
The next morning the Beaumont children were officially declared missing. One apparently comforting fact was that children almost never disappear in groups. There is something of safety in numbers, even for children. The typical missing child is one who has run away for one reason or another. But the Beaumont children had absolutely no reason to run away, and Jane would never have let her younger siblings do so anyway.
This left two possible explanations for the disappearance of the Beaumont children. Either they had met with some kind of accident, probably drowning, or someone had abducted them. From the outset, the latter looked more likely.
A massive search was launched. The coast was scoured for kilometres both north and south of the Colley Reserve, in the hope of finding something. However, the children's belongings were not found at the beach, and the question had to be asked: Even if it were possible that on a hot summer's afternoon at a crowded beach that three children could be swept out to sea and drowned without anyone noticing, was it possible that the children could carry their towels, a book, and other belongings into the water, and for none of them to be found? It was clearly very close to being impossible.
At the Beaumont home, Mrs Beaumont was kept under sedation. Friends and relatives gathered to wait for news, and a telephone was installed so that the family could keep in touch with Glenelg Police Station. Mr Beaumont visited the station twice a day for news.
By the weekend the disappearance of the Beaumont children was a national news item and the search had become one of the biggest ever mounted in Australia. Mr Beaumont had once been an owner-driver with the Suburban Taxi Service, and when the drivers found out that it was his children who'd gone missing, 40 of them joined the search. The search itself had been extended to every seaside suburb, and beyond. Sandhills were searched, and police knocked on the door of every house that the children could have passed on their way home. As well as the taxi drivers, hundreds of ordinary citizens asked if there was any way in which they could help.
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On 31 January, five days after the disappearance of his children, Mr Beaumont went on national television to appeal for their return. He expressed the hope that whoever was holding his children would return them, then he broke down. Hundreds of calls were received, mostly from people believing that they'd seen the children. Every lead was followed up.
Following Jim Beaumont's appeal, the South Australian Police Commissioner asked Adelaide householders to search their properties, to investigate sheds and hiding places. Despite the resources that were being poured into the search, the police were just as baffled as the public.