?My name is Cleo?: how an 18-day search ended with an Australian detective holding a four-year-old girl - The Guardian Australia

When detective Cameron Blaine broke his way into the room of the small house on the outskirts of the Western Australian town of Carnarvon, he was pretty certain the four-year-old girl inside was the one he had been searching for.

But he needed to be sure.

That was how one of the biggest and most dramatic searches in Western Australian police history ended on Wednesday morning. It was a hunt that engaged a nation and garnered widespread international attention.

The search for little Cleo Smith had begun 18 days before - just hours after police say she was taken in the dead of the night from the family tent she was sleeping in at the Blowholes campsite, a 10-hour drive north of Perth.

During the next fortnight, an army of officers sifted through rubbish along 600km of highway, scoured unforgiving bushland, and combed through homes, industrial estates and CCTV footage. The search area - a 1,000km radius from the campsite - was enormous.

Trackers were brought in and drones were deployed, as well as specialist aircraft to search the vast areas.

But in the end, Cleo was found in her home town of Carnarvon, less than 100km away from the family tent from which she disappeared on 16 October.