A 12-year-old Sydney boy stole his parents' credit card, tricked his grandmother into giving him his passport and flew to Bali on his own after a family argument.
The boy, given the pseudonym Drew by Australian TV show A Current Affair, was told he couldn't go to Bali by his mother, but managed to book himself flights there and a hotel room, and to depart Australia unimpeded.
Telling his family he was going to school, he rode his razor scooter to his local train station, from where he travelled to the airport and, using a self-service check-in terminal, boarded a flight for Perth, then another for Indonesia.
He was only quizzed once, at Perth airport, when staff asked him for identification to prove he was over 12.
“They just asked for my student ID and passport to prove that I’m over 12 and that I’m in secondary school,” he told A Current Affair. “It was great because I wanted to go on an adventure.”
In Bali, he checked in to the All Seasons Hotel, telling staff he was waiting for his sister to arrive.
After his school reported he was absent, his family scrambled to find out where he was. Discovering he was in Bali, his mother, Emma, flew there to collect him.
Emma said the boy doesn’t like hearing the word “no”.
“Shocked, disgusted – there’s no emotion . . . [for] what we felt when we found he left overseas,” she told A Current Affair. – Guardian service