'Hank the Tank' bulldog returns home after a month lost in bushland
The dog was missing for 30 days and four hours before finding his way back into the arms of his owner and best friend, Pakenham police officer Paul Lester.
Mr Lester believes Hank spent the month lost in the chilly, dense bush of Bunyip State Park in Victoria's Gippsland region.
Hank vanished on May 15 from a property at Tonimbuk, north of Bunyip in west Gippsland, where Mr Lester was house-sitting.
The property backs onto the state park and the mountain bulldog cross took off with the house owner's dog, Benji, into a stretch of dense bushland known for its steep terrain, wild animals and freezing winter nights.
Benji returned two days later, but there was still no sign of Hank, who Mr Lester adopted from a rescue shelter in 2019.
"Hank's very important to me," Mr Lester said.
"I was … going through a bit of a tough time back then, through some workplace injuries.
"Hank just sort of put me back on the right path and changed my life.
"He has been like my son ever since."
Hank's disappearance didn't raise a red flag immediately because he was known to chase rabbits.
"He is a natural boofhead," Mr Lester said.
"One time he tried to cuddle a kangaroo and didn't know what to do."
But when Hank didn't show up for days Mr Lester started to worry and went to extraordinary lengths to find him.
He installed roadside cameras, used drones and appealed to local horseriders and dirt bikers to help with the search.
Then on June 15, Mr Lester, who was still house-sitting, noticed a white fuzzy thing in the backyard and couldn't believe his eyes.
"It just hit me … that is Hank, just sunbaking near his favourite lavender bush," Mr Lester said.
"Looking at me with the biggest dopiest look on his face, like, 'Oh, g'day mate, where have you been?'"
The usually fit dog of 30 kilograms had lost a significant amount of weight and was a "muddy heap of mess".
"He has lost about 12 kilos or so, his ribs were exposed," Mr Lester said.
"I know there is no McDonald's down in the Bunyip State Park, so he would have been roughing it out there."
Now safely home, Hank the Tank is back to doing what he loves best: lounging in the sun and being by Mr Lester's side.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
ABC News
an hour ago
- ABC News
Victorian government to change state's Working with Children Check system
The Victorian government will strengthen its Working with Children Check laws, but the first change will not come into effect until August, the ABC can reveal. Warning: This story contains details of alleged child sex abuse that may distress some audience members. On Tuesday, Victoria Police announced a childcare worker in Melbourne's south-west had been charged with more than 70 offences, including sexual assault and producing child abuse material, related to eight alleged victims at the Creative Garden childcare centre in Point Cook. Police said the accused, who had worked for about 20 childcare centres over about eight years, held a valid Working with Children Check (WWCC). The ABC understands the Department of Government Services (DGS) recently completed an "initial review" of Victoria's Working with Children scheme. The review was ordered after the ABC revealed people under investigation for serious offences could still hold one of the permits. A WWCC is a background check conducted by the government that screens people for criminal history and professional conduct findings. Currently in Victoria only criminal charges or a regulatory finding can trigger a check being revoked. For example, someone banned by the education department from working at a preschool for posing a risk of harm to children could still hold a valid WWCC. The government said that from August, screening regulations would change so DGS could "take into account prohibition notices issued from the Department of Education when determining or revoking a person's clearance to work with children". "It's clear to us that this system needs to be strengthened," Government Services Minister Natalie Hutchins told the ABC last month, after the ABC's extensive coverage of the issue. "This is just the first step to strengthen the Working With Children Check system to ensure that awful incidents that have occurred never happen again. "I will have more to say on outcomes of the review soon." It has been four years since ABC reporting sparked investigations that would lead to flaws in the WWCC being exposed. In 2022, the Victorian Ombudsman recommended the state urgently change its laws after a youth worker was cleared to work with children despite facing sexual offence allegations, including rape, in New South Wales. The state-based changes flagged for August will still not allow the Victorian system to consider a broad range of information such as child protection reports or police intelligence. Other states and territories can. Do you know more about this story? Contact Josie Taylor at josiegtaylor@ If you're sharing sensitive information, read our tips on how to contact us confidentially. It has been 10 years since the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse recommended Australia's eight separate state and territory working-with-children systems be both standardised and nationalised. In a rare case of a former royal commissioner speaking publicly, Robert Fitzgerald told the ABC it was "shameful" this work had still not been done. "There doesn't need to be any more reviews or any more inquiries, or any more royal commissions," he said. "The evidence was overwhelming 10 years ago and it's even more so today," he said. "Working with children checks are in fact the very first thing you need to do to create child-safe institutions. "The longer we delay in fixing the system … we continue to leave children at risk." Mr Fitzgerald, who is now the age discrimination commissioner, called for the federal, state and territory governments to urgently establish a national WWCC system and a real-time national police database. The Australian Childhood Foundation (ACF) said the alleged abuse case announced by Victoria Police on Tuesday was "one of the most significant and far-reaching cases of [alleged] child sexual abuse ever seen in a childcare setting in Australia". The Victorian government has established a webpage with information for affected families. Information, including details of the government's dedicated hotline, can be found here. It called on governments across Australia to swiftly embed mandatory child abuse prevention education into the scheme, an issue it has lobbied on for years. "We can't always stop people who want to harm children from slipping through the cracks, but governments must act to ensure that the adults around children are trained to recognise risk, respond appropriately and act to protect them," chief executive Janise Mitchell said. Emma Hakansson, a lead advocate with the ACF, said WWCC holders continued to abuse children. "At the moment [the scheme] is essentially a screening tool to make sure people convicted of harming children and other dangerous crimes can't work with children," she said. "But we know that most perpetrators of child sexual abuse don't have any past convictions and they go under the radar. "Until the WWCC has mandatory child abuse prevention training as part of it, which we are calling for, it will not work." Ms Hakansson said embedding training into the scheme would make the community safer. "At the moment, to receive a Working with Children Check you have to do zero training," she said. "You just need to go through a police screening." She said people were often trained about how to respond to a direct disclosure of child abuse, but at that point, it was already too late. "A child has already been abused," she said. Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan was asked on Tuesday if she supported the proposal to make child abuse prevention education training mandatory as part of the WWCC scheme. She said the recommendation would be considered. "This is one of a number of pieces of advice that is already being provided to federal and state ministers as they work through the national framework that sits across the early childhood sector," she said. "Recommendations around additional training is one of those recommendation that we will examine. "We understand that there is a need here, to look at what happened, to understand what happened, and to strengthen the regulations."
SBS Australia
10 hours ago
- SBS Australia
Melbourne childcare worker charged with multiple child sexual abuse offences
Melbourne childcare worker charged with multiple child sexual abuse offences Published 1 July 2025, 7:12 am A warning that the following report contains distressing details. In a case that Victoria 's premier has called 'every parent's worst nightmare', authorities are urging 12 hundred young children in Victoria be tested for sexually transmitted diseases, after a childcare worker was charged with sexual abuse offences. The alleged offender worked at several childcare centres across Melbourne.
News.com.au
11 hours ago
- News.com.au
‘Genocide': Bombshell finding as first Australian truth-telling commission releases report on treatment of Indigenous Australians
Crimes against humanity and a genocide were committed against Indigenous Australians in Victoria, a landmark report by Australia's first formal truth-telling commission has found. The landmark Yoorrook for Justice report into Victoria's Child Protection and Criminal Justice Systems, released on Tuesday, made 46 recommendations based on findings gathered across 67 days of public hearings, the testimony of more than 200 witnesses and the contributions of 1,500 first nations people. The Yoorrook Justice Commission was established in 2021 to examine the 'extent and impact of historical and ongoing systemic injustice' against Indigenous Australians in Victoria since the start of colonisation. In their final report, the Commission found serious crimes were committed against Indigenous Australians from 1834 - including ' mass killings, disease, sexual violence, exclusion, linguicide, cultural erasure, environmental degradation, child removal, absorption and assimilation'. 'Yoorrook found that the decimation of the First Peoples population in Victoria between 1 per cent and 5 per cent of the pre-colonisation population by 1901 was the result of 'a coordinated plan of different actions aimed at the destruction of the essential foundations of the life of national groups',' the report states. 'This was genocide.' In addition, the Commission found Victoria's child protection system is not only discriminatory, but that it causes trauma, disconnects children from their culture and is in breach of 'fundamental cultural and human rights of the child'. Speaking to Patricia Karvelas on ABC's Afternoon Briefing, former co-chair of the First Peoples Assembly Marcus Stewart called the report 'historic'. 'We needed to look at the systemic injustices that had happened throughout Victoria to First Nations people. And we needed a mechanism in order to do that so our people could come forward, speak their truth, tell their stories,' Mr Stewart said. 'It's important to know that these mechanisms have been used worldwide,' he said. 'Canada had a Truth and Reconciliation Commission that examined residential schools. 'East Timor had a truth telling process (after) Indonesian occupation, and the most famous … was chaired by the late Desmond Tutu in South Africa.' Speaking on the correlations between current and historical conditions faced by Indigenous children, Mr Stewart said the document was 'heavy'. 'The act of genocide did occur on our shores and in particular, did significantly impact First Nations people here in Victoria.' 'This process isn't to lay blame, but to create opportunity.' On Tuesday night, Yoorrook Commissioner Travis Lovett took to Instagram to tell Australians to 'take the time to read the recommendations'. 'This is not light reading, but it is necessary. For the first time, we as Aboriginal People have held the pen and told our truths, in our words,' he wrote. 'This official public record has the power to change forever how people learn about the true history of this state. It must be included in the Victorian school curriculum so that future generations grow up knowing the full story.' 'It's moving, it may make you cry, but it will make you think'.
