A little boy who vanished from his family rural property four days ago has been found alive.
Anthony 'AJ' Elfalak, three, was last seen playing at his family's 256ha rural property in Putty, about 150km north-west of Sydney in the Upper Hunter, four days ago.
AJ, who has autism and is non-verbal, was last seen playing on the porch - with his mother saying he was out of her sight for just a matter of seconds.
The youngster was found in a creek on Monday morning and is now being NSW Ambulance paramedics.
Crucial security camera footage has 'gone missing' at the rural property where a toddler vanished without a trace, a family friend has claimed.
Family friend Alan Hashem, who was at the property at the time AJ went missing, claimed someone had tampered with security cameras he had installed on a tree high above the remote bushland road outside the home.
Mr Hashem said the time AJ went missing was in the four-hour window of footage that was now missing.
The Elfalak family with father Anthony, mother Kelly, AJ (pictured centre) and two of his brothers
'There's one key factor and this probably the first time I actually mentioned this, I installed cameras on that post right there,' he told the Today show on Monday.
'There's footage missing, unexplained. (We have footage from) days before, days after, but not during the time.
'You know what's more alarming? We installed it so high you can't tamper with it and we had two mechanisms of storage - cloud storage and physical storage - and there's no data in that time slot.
'We provided the user name and password to the police, we provided them the actual original memory card. There's a lot of explaining to do.'
He told Sunrise: 'I put it so high up in a tree that when the fire brigade arrived I said "quickly, quickly, please, let me get the CCTV footage".
'We went in there, and I can't explain it, the window in which he went missing ... probably about four hours, there's footage missing.'
'There was 160 videos after the incident of emergency services and us taking down the camera. We just don't have answers at the moment.'
Nine reporter Gabrielle Boyle was quick to point out the strange nature of the decision to install CCTV cameras at the isolated property.
'It must be said it is a very unusual location to have CCTV. This is such a remote location,' she said.
'Many of these farmhouses in and around this area are just little shacks, shantytowns if you will. These aren't big established homes. This isn't a fancy area.'
'This is regional NSW. This is very rugged terrain not the type of place you would expect to have CCTV available and to think that that window where the little boy has gone missing is unavailable on that camera is just so strange.'
Family friend Alan Hashem (pictured) claims security cameras installed at the property where AJ disappeared have been tampered with
Mr Hashem was at the property helping AJ's mum prepare lunch on what he described as a typical afternoon when the toddler disappeared.
The boy's older brothers were in charge of keeping an eye on AJ as they played outside while their father was fixing quad bikes.
'The oldest boy needed to go to the bathroom and took the youngest one AJ and he left him just inside the dining area,' Mr Hashem told the Today show.
'After a few minutes, the boy's come out and entered through the other part of the house and the mother goes, 'Where's AJ?'
'The boys had a puzzled look on their face. We all stand up and at that moment I had the closest view to the driveway and noticed a white ute, we believe either a Mazda or a Toyota, a much older model. It was slowly driving through here.'
'We didn't think much of it but we did in the meantime, we had these ATVs, we had about four of them and we thought if AJ's gone somewhere it's not going to be far.'
He and AJ's family are 'without a doubt' the toddler was abducted and hasn't get lost in remote bushland which backs onto the property.
'He's always quite afraid and attached to his mum, hence why his mum couldn't have him by her side when she's cooking, he is with his brothers.
'He's never wandered.'
Three-year-old 'AJ' Elfalak (pictured) disappeared from a rural property nearly 72 hours ago - with his family fearing he has been abducted
AJ's mother Kelly insisted her son is 'not a wanderer' and 'never leaves her side', with his father Anthony adding 'a kid doesn't just up and disappear'.
Mr Hashem said AJ's disappearance has shattered his parents, whom he described as the loveliest people he knows.
'Just bring him home,' he pleaded.
'You don't understand how much pain and anguish this family's feeling. The reason why I am the spokesperson is because the mother is not coping and the father, he's holding it together by a thread.'
The family haven't given up on finding AJ, with Mr Hashem claiming AJ's dad Anthony got a tip-off shortly before the Today show interview.
'He got a bit of a tip-off, heard a noise up in the mountain, heard a noise up in the mountain, he took off,' he said.
'We're still walking through the lake down the bottom there, we're driving through the community. We're thinking of doing letter box drops.
'He's hired his
