THE mother of a three-year-old boy who wandered from his Clackline home yesterday has told how she thought he was playing hide and seek before she realised both he and the family dog were missing.

Little Abel Hart walked off from the family home, 80km northeast of Perth, about 5.30pm yesterday.

His mother Kelly Hart told PerthNow her son went for an afternoon nap while she was down the other end of the house hanging out washing.

When Mrs Hart went to get him for dinner she noticed he was not in his bed.

“We did our usual thing thinking, OK he’s playing hide and seek, so we checked all the paddocks around our place, all the sheds, the roof — anywhere where this little Houdini can get to and then it clicked that my staffy was gone,” Mrs Hart said.

“I said to my husband ‘Dusty’s gone’ and he said ‘Don’t put two and two together’ but I said nup, I’ve got to phone the police.”

At the time, Abel was wearing just a nappy and Mrs Hart said it looked like he had worked out how to open a locked glass sliding door.

For the next seven hours, the Harts waited while police, SES volunteers and community members launched a search.

Mrs Hart said she was worried her son had walked the small distance from the house to Great Eastern Highway where he could have been hit by a car or picked up by passers-by.

“I had all the negatives going through my head and in the end I was a blubbering idiot,” she said.

However, Abel was eventually found asleep on a lounge chair in a vacant house on Great Eastern Highway, about 800m from the family home, about 12.30am.

The family dog was by his side and is believed to have stayed with him the whole time.

Acting Inspector Tony Colfer, from the Wheatbelt District office, said the young boy helped himself to some food at the property, turned on the TV and fell asleep in the house where he was eventually found.

Police and SES volunteers were led to the property after an SES dog picked up a strong scent.

Act-Insp Colfer said about 60 members of the Clackline community helped police and the SES in their search efforts.

“The young boy is used to going to fridge (at home) and getting some food, so when he has got to the vacant house he’s actually gone to the fridge, got something to eat and put the TV on,” Act-Insp Colfer said.

“He’s then fallen asleep and that’s where he was located.”

Act-Insp Colfer described the young boy as a “character” but said he was very lucky at the same time.

“There are sections of that area that do contain water, also the highway, he’s walked 800 metres … from where his property is. If he’d walked 800m in the wrong direction we could have had him ending up on the highway, we get a lot of road trains out there,” he said.

“It was a great result but it could have ended up tragically.”

Mrs Hart said when the family heard Abel had been found she left out the front door to drive with the police to a town hall to be reunited with her son.

“I just grabbed him, cuddled him and cried and he just patted my head,” she said.

The mum of four said all the doors in the house were now going to be fitted with extra locks to make sure Abel does not wander off again.

Act-Insp Colfer said the community spirit shown by the town members last night during the search was remarkable.

“It just shows that in a small country town how many people can gather together when incidents like this occur,” he said.

Mrs Hart spoke to The Sunday Times back in January during the Parkerville bush fires when she started coordinating donation packages and found a letter from an eight-year-old girl reaching out to victims.

She said she would be taking a break from the care packages to spend time with her son and make sure the home doors were made secure.

Twitter: @HickeyPhil@KaitlynPST