Farm girl: Betty Colt, 50, has lived quite the life since five of her children were taken away by authorities in 2012
This is the secret hideaway of the matriarch of Australia’s infamous incest clan – after she ditched the family’s putrid bush camp for a faraway farm.
Six years ago, horrified child protection officers saved a dozen ‘Colt family’ kids from squalid tents and caravans in Boorowa, western New South Wales.
Eleven of the children were inbred. Few knew how to use toilet paper and many had ‘warped’ ideas about sex and hygiene.
Betty Colt, the mother-of-thirteen at the centre of the horrific saga, has lived quite the life in the years since five of her children were taken away.
Daily Mail Australia can reveal the 50-year-old shacked up with refugees and wannabe migrants inside a detention centre, with Colt striking up an unlikely friendship with a young model.
That was before she picked up all her belongings and embarked on an epic 1000km journey west of the family’s filthy home base.
With one of her daughters, 34, and two other young male relatives, Colt made herself a home at a farm a farm on the outskirts of a tiny South Australian township, several hours’ drive north of Adelaide.
The Daily Mail this week found a quaint cottage on the property, the front door of which was surrounded by cigarette butts and discarded rubbish.
This is the South Australian property Betty Colt and several of her relatives call home
Betty Colt (left) and her daughter Raylene, 34, (right) moved to a small South Australian township
Cigarette butts were scattered around the front door of a cottage on the property when the Daily Mail visited this week
Filthy past: This is the inside of the filthy Boorowa, NSW camp where Betty Colt’s kids lived
The family have a long history of picking fruit in the area, locals told Daily Mail Australia.
‘They’ve had a long association with employment in this area,’ said a one-time employer of the Colts. ‘It stretches back decades.’
Farmers ask few questions of their staff, because workers are ‘gold’.
‘There’s a fair collection of them out here … They’re transient people, they’re gypsies’.
Wanderers they may be, but in 2015 Betty Colt was anything but. She was stuck behind the wire fence of a Sydney immigration detention centre.
Sharing a room with wannabe migrants and asylum seekers was a strange place for a woman who had lived most of her life in Australia to find herself.
The Colt family (a name given by a court) have a ‘long association’ with the area, local farmers said. A chicken pen on the property – which the family do not own – is pictured above
A view of the vineyard on the bush acreage, which is several hours drive north of Adelaide
Dusty highway: A scene in South Australia not far from where the Colt family lived
Fast friends: Colt (blurred) with her model friend and another woman on an apparent night out
Unlikely friends at Villawood
Colt had long hoped to bring two of her children to SA to work as ‘fruit pickers’.
But the reunion never happened – and Colt found herself caught in an immigration drama.
The Federal government was planning to deport her to New Zealand.
It was a controversial ruling that made headlines across both countries.
Colt’s parents, June and Timothy, were born in New Zealand.
But Betty came to Australia as a kid in the 1970s and had all of her of children here.
Life in detention wasn’t lonely, though. She struck up an unlikely friendship with a much younger woman, who was facing migration difficulties of her own.
The woman, who asked not to be named, now works as a Sydney model and is an aspiring actress.
‘I can assure you (Betty Colt) is a very nice person,’ the university-age model told Daily Mail Australia.
Colt was placed in Sydney’s Villawood Detention Centre (file photo) after an immigration drama
The model said she was shocked when she learned of the family’s long-running incest drama.
‘I didn’t even know she was involved in that one. Someone told me about her case (later), I said, “Is that true?”
‘And she (Betty Colt) said it’s not true at all.’
Their friendship persists to this day.
The pair have enjoyed a night out together with friends, and the twenty-something model referred to Colt as her ‘BFF’ (best friend forever) online just a year ago.
‘Last time she (messaged) me was on March 30 (this year) saying ‘happy Easter babe,’ the model said.
Colt was never deported. She stepped free of Villawood in November 2015.
Sick posts and a new life with relatives
Betty recently decorated her Facebook photos with the slogan ‘love makes a family”
It’s no surprise that after detention, Colt headed straight back into the loving arms of her family.
Betty moved in with her daughter, Raylene Colt, 34, and at least two younger male relatives, on a farm several hours drive north of Adelaide.
Incest was still on her mind, social media posts showed.
When a news story popped up on her Facebook news feed about a mother and son who wanted a romantic relationship, but couldn’t, Colt had something to say.
‘That is sad,’ she wrote. Her post was surrounded by comments condemning the relationship as ‘the most disgusting thing I have heard’.
Still at it: This was incest clan matriarch Betty Colt’s response on Facebook to a story about a ‘mother and son (who) are in love and want to change the laws so they can be together’
Colt also adopted ‘love makes a family as a motto’ on Facebook, tagging the phrase on several photos of her relatives.
Other family members – who live across three states – followed her lead.
Betty Colt was nowhere to be seen at her family farmhouse this week, where she has apparently lived a happy life fruit-picking and tending to the grounds.
A modern ute and 4WD sat in the driveway and the remains of a double-decker bus rusted away at the back of the grounds.
A cross-eyed relative confirmed Betty had been living at the property.
But he wasn’t interested in answering questions about the clan’s mysterious matriarch.
‘Get the f*** off my property or I’ll set the dog on you,’ he said.
COLT CASE: INSIDE THE CAMP THAT SHOCKED THE WORLD
A three-person tent where members of the 38-strong Colt family lived up until July 2012
The discovery of generations of an allegedly incestuous family living in squalid conditions in rural New South Wales six years ago revolted Australia and stunned the world.
The 38-member ‘Colt’ clan was found crammed into rundown caravans, sheds and tents in the state’s south in mid-2012 after a conversation about family sex was overheard in a school playground.
Authorities removed 12 illiterate and malnourished children from the camp, including five of Betty Colt’s children, and placed them into care. All but one were inbred.
It was described at the time as the worst case of incest uncovered in Australia. Below is a family tree MailOnline pulled together from court documents at the time.
A family tree shows the allegedly incestuous relationships between members of the Colt clan
‘I’ll never get over what I saw there,’ one female police officer later reportedly told a colleague.
The children told officials of generations of alleged sexual abuse by adults on children and siblings on siblings, involving boys and girls as young as 12.
Officers swooped on the remote property after one of the children was overheard saying his sister was having a baby.
But the family did not know which brother had fathered the child.
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