The overjoyed father opens up to Frank Thorne and Glen Williams about his long, exhausting cycling mission to find his little boy Andrew.
After criss-crossing Europe for thousands of kilometres, shedding tears of exhaustion and anguish as he searched for his son, the first thing Ken Thompson did with his little boy – at six-year-old Andrew’s request – was playing a board game called Maze.
The whole world has read about Ken’s two-and-a-half-year search for Andrew after his wife, Melinda Stratton, abducted him from their Sunshine Coast home.
Now, talking to Woman’s Day from Amsterdam about his joyous reunion with his son, Ken, 57, says he had no idea what to expect, what his wife had told his son about him, or whether Andrew even remembered who he was.
He didn’t know what words he wanted to hear when they were introduced, but what he heard made his heart melt.
“I want you to help me with some toys,” Ken recounts Andrew saying at the start of their 40-minute meeting under the watchful eye of psychologists. Andrew then asked him to play Maze.
“He’s a very bright boy. I showed him how to play the game once, where you build a pathway through a maze, and the second time he beat me,” says Ken, a former NSW Fire Brigades Deputy Commissioner. “It was a wonderful moment.”
