Fairy Meadow

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In 1970, a three-year-old girl was abducted. Can the mystery be solved, 50 years on?

In 1970, three-year-old Cheryl Grimmer was taken from an Australian beach. No-one knows what happened. Fifty years on - can the mystery be solved?

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Fairy Meadow: 1. When the Wind Changed

1. When the Wind Changed

BBC Radio 4 - Fairy Meadow, 1. When the Wind Changed

Three-year-old Cheryl Grimmer disappears from an Australian beach. A mystery begins.

Three-year-old Cheryl Grimmer is with her big brother Ricki on an Australian beach. He turns his back and she disappears. A mystery begins...Ricki's guilt...his search for answers.

The Grimmer family moved from the UK to Australia in 1969. They were "ten pound poms" - part of a huge wave of migration down under.
Months later, Three-year-old Cheryl Grimmer disappeared from Fairy Meadow beach in New South Wales. She was never seen again. In the moments before she vanished, she was being looked after by her oldest brother, Ricki. He was just seven.
This is the story of that day, and of its impact in the months, years and decades that followed. It's Ricki's story - his desperate search for answers, and his battle with guilt.
And it's the story of an extraordinary police enquiry that was dramatically re-started almost 50 years after Cheryl was taken.

BBC News Correspondent Jon Kay has been investigating the case in Australia and in the UK since 2016. With exclusive access to the family and the investigating officers, he begins an eight-part exploration of this moving, gripping tale.

Produced for BBC Audio in Bristol by Chris Ledgard
Music: Elizabeth Purnell
Studio engineer: Jacques Sweeney
Editor: James Cook

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1. When the Wind Changed

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