'We want her in our arms': Mother of missing four-year-old Cleo Smith appeals for information

Ellie Smith has said all she wants is to be reunited with her daughter

The mother of a four-year-old girl who vanished from a popular Australian campsite has said "we want her in our arms", as she made an emotional appeal for information.

Cleo Smith was reported missing in the early hours of the morning on Saturday October 16 in Macleod, near Carnarvon in Western Australia.

Her parents could not find her at the Blowholes campground site where they had been camping, having last saw her at 1.30am when she asked for a drink of water.

Ellie Smith, Cleo's mother, then woke at 6am to find her daughter was gone.

"If the person that is watching has Cleo, we want her home, we want her to be home with our baby. We want her in our arms," Ms Smith said in an interview with 7News alongside Cleo's step-dad Jake Gliddon.

A reward of more than £540,000 has been offered for information that leads to Cleo's discovery, with police suspecting she was abducted.

Western Australia police have said the zip on the tent in which she was sleeping when she went missing was up so high there was no way she could have opened it herself.

At the time of her disappearance, Cleo was in a red and black sleeping bag, which is also missing.

The family had planned to go the beach and teach Cleo to go swimming, along with her baby sister, Isla, who was out on her first camping trip.

The search initially focused on the ocean on the assumption that she had wandered from the tent.

But police now say her tent’s zip was opened by someone taller than the child.

"We are going on to ten days but it feels like eternity already," Ms Smith said.

She went on to describe looking for her daughter "through tears", as other mums joined in on the search while the couple stayed on the phone to the police.

'It is nothing I would ever wish upon anyone,' Ms Smith said

"When the police were asking us to go through everything I remember thinking: how did someone come into that tent and take Cleo?" Ms smith added.

"How could someone take a child- and my gut just felt sick."

Land and sea search teams - involving more than 100 officers, volunteers, and army reservists - have searched the area surrounding the Blowholes campsite where Cleo went missing.

Looking for any evidence that could aid their investigation, forensic officers have since scoured the inside of the couple's home in Carnarvon, a coastal town of about 5,000 people which is an hour's drive from the campsite.

Police say they haven't given up hope on finding her alive.