TINY Elijah Rainbow Fisher was the baby boy his parents had been waiting for.
But his short life ended on Saturday night when, police allege, his
father David Fisher walked 1km from the family home at Eagleby, pushing
his son in a pram, before falling from a pedestrian bridge at the Logan
River Parklands with Elijah in his arms.
His father surfaced, but seven-month-old Elijah was lost in the swirling water.
Police
will allege Fisher walked back to his home to tell the boy's mother,
Lauren Fisher, and Elijah's four older sisters what had happened.
"Elijah's drowned. Elijah's gone," he allegedly told her.
Mrs
Fisher made frantic phone calls to her mother in Western Australia, to
emergency services and then raced down to the Logan River to search for
her lost little boy.
Family members told The Courier-Mail her husband had been "wailing
and screaming" in the background when the calls were made, around
6.47pm.
Just more than an hour later, Mrs Fisher posted a
heart-rending online farewell: "I was so blessed to meet Elijah Rainbow.
26.11.11 - 23.06.12. I love you, little one. Go with God," she tweeted.
David Fisher, 38, was charged with murder around midnight on Saturday after being interviewed by detectives from Logan CIB.
He was kept in the watchhouse on the weekend and is due to front Beenleigh Magistrates Court this morning.
Water
police found Elijah's body yesterday morning on a scrubby bank of the
Logan River, roughly 1.5km downstream of the bridge his father allegedly
fell from.
Family, friends and neighbours were shocked yesterday,
saying the free-living, bohemian life led by the family had been
shattered.
Elijah's grandfather, Victor Bissett, said the boy was "the precious son that they'd been waiting for so long".
"He
was an active little child, very much loved by his sisters, no problems
at all and advanced in many respects in terms of his development," he
said.
Grieving family members - including Elijah's other aunt in
Hong Kong - were struggling to make sense of the events surrounding the
tragedy, Mr Bissett said. "I'm just as overwhelmed as anybody," he said. "We're all trying to come to understand it."
He
said Mrs Fisher, just before running out to search frantically for her
lost son, made a chilling phone call to her mother Stephanie, telling
her: "Elijah has drowned. I need you to come up now."
Both Elijah's parents had strong religious upbringings, but in their adult lives had sought to "unchurch".
They
had been together for about 13 years, and followed an alternative
lifestyle where they home-schooled their children, had a vegan diet and
travelled across Australia and New Zealand on a truck they lived out of
for weeks at a time.
Their nomadic lifestyle was funded by renting out their home and a carpet-laying business.
Mrs
Fisher, a one-time website designer for the Crime and Misconduct
Commission, blogged prolifically on parenthood, her marriage and her
family's trials and tribulations via a website.
She talks about seeing Elijah in a vision when she was 19, and being certain her fifth child would be a boy.
"We're
a nomadic family with five kids, currently travelling in Australia,
re-thinking everything and living free," the webpage says.
Mrs
Fisher spent part of her youth in West Africa, in Niger and the Ivory
Coast where her mother and father, Christian missionaries, ran an
evangelical publishing business.
The family had returned to their home on Eagle Drive less than a fortnight ago from a stay in New Zealand.
They
returned periodically to live in the large shed at the rear of the
property after leasing out the main house to another family.
Mr Bissett said Lauren, his youngest daughter, was a "very level-headed" woman.
In prolific online posts, she portrays her husband as a devoted family man.
"So
thankful for David who manages the kids 100% except for feeding the
baby," she wrote on Twitter two months after Elijah's birth.
Only
three weeks ago, she wrote: "A week in the bush without internet or
electricity (but with babysitting and firebaths!) has been wonderful for
our relationship!"
Elijah was born without a doctor or midwife in
attendance at a "Rainbow Gathering" on a property near Singleton,
northern NSW, on November 26.
Neighbours said the family was very happy.
"I
used to talk to them over the fence," one neighbour said. "He used to
tell me if I needed a hand with anything, he'd be happy to help. The
children were just so lovely, always playing in the backyard."
