Bush caravan, phones, a baggage check: how depraved web unravelled

Timothy John Lane was headed home to his Stanhope caravan after a trip to Thailand in April 2023 when he was stopped by Australian Border Force (ABF) for a baggage check at Sydney International Airport.

Officers were combing through the then 51-year-old's Samsung Galaxy S22 phone when they stumbled across a cache of child abuse material, including videos and images of children as young as three.

An Australian Federal Police (AFP) investigation sparked by the airport discovery revealed Lane's conversations on social media with profiles of women in the Philippines.

Lane had requested they send graphic child abuse material of their younger family members or friends in exchange for payments.

He wrote of his evil plan to travel to the Philippines and abuse "lots of little girls".

Lane was re-arrested at Maitland Police Station in May last year and pleaded guilty to a string of child abuse charges. He has remained in custody since.

During sentencing in Sydney Downing Centre District Court on Friday, Judge Nanette Williams chose not to read the entirety of the twisted conversations between Lane and others outside Australia.

"Given the depraved and abhorrent nature of those text messages, I propose to limit the exposure of the community to that material," she told the court.

Lane was sentenced to seven years in jail, with a non-parole period of four years and three months.

"This type of offending must be deterred," Judge Williams said.

Some details of the conversations and the child abuse material are too graphic to publish.

Lane came to the attention of authorities when he stepped off a Qantas flight from Bangkok alone in April 2023 and was subject to a baggage examination by the ABF, when the child abuse material was discovered.

Lane was released on bail conditions and ordered to live at his Stanhope caravan site, about 80 kilometres north west of Newcastle.

But, AFP officers discovered he had been having explicit Facebook Messenger conversations with the women in the Philippines in November and December 2022.

When police later raided the rubbish-strewn caravan site and Lane's Toyota Hilux, they seized another Samsung with child abuse material stored on it and an iPhone which revealed end-to-end encryption service Telegram had been used "brazenly" while Lane was on bail to have further sexualised conversations regarding children overseas.

A letter of apology from Lane was tendered to the court, and his mother penned a letter of support for him.

Judge Williams found Lane had some insight into his offending and shown some remorse.

The court heard some troubling details of Lane's upbringing, his mental health and medical conditions, and his drug use.

Lane was educated at Sydney's Newington College and relocated to Queensland before his life spiralled out of control.

Among the eight charges Lane was sentenced for on April 12 were two counts of procuring a child for sex outside of Australia.