I looked up Kendall on whereis.com and it seems that Benaroon Drive might be around 500 metres long - that is the distance from the junction with Batar Creek Rd up to the grandmother's house. Would others agree? It is the equivalent of going past about 7-9 of those half acre properties.
Anyone who knows about young kids: would a three year old run or walk that distance?
The only other thing I can think of, is that William might have taken off down Benaroon Drive and somehow even the grandmother, if she was consistently sitting at the back of the house, did not see him!
Being picked up on Batar Creek Road would open up the options exponentially...
The things against that argument, though, are the family/friends' comments that William did not wander, the police's comments about the high level of visibility down the road, and that no one saw William in that vicinity given that they started searching for him immediately.
Maybe all the locals from the street went up in the direction of the grandmother's house, though, rather than down towards Batar Creek Rd, and effectively just missed William?...
I'll bet the first thought would have been that he's run off into the bush.
Then again, police were there after about half an hour. They would have had to turn off Batar Creek Rd to access Benaroon Drive. If he could run/walk that far, it might have taken William five minutes to first of all reach Batar Creek Rd... He'd have had to have been very unlucky, if one of the first cars driving by, in those first minutes, happens to be an abductor!
Even Daniel Morcombe was spotted by passing motorists on the side of the road, BEFORE he was abducted.