Missing girl's mum said aliens were coming

The mother of missing girl Leonie Hutchinson told a friend the world was ending and aliens were going to take her and her daughter away, an inquest has heard.

Kate Hutchinson had previously spoken of a "wolfman" who appeared to her and was going to lead her to aliens, according to friend Jessie Ryan.

Leonie has not been seen since December 2001, when she would have been two years-old, but authorities did not realise she was missing from her NSW Hunter Valley home until January 2004.

Her mother has since refused to say what happened to her daughter.

Ms Ryan, who lived with Ms Hutchinson in 1998, said that her friend - who used cannabis at the time - would visit what she described as a "special place" at Gorokan.

"She told me the wolfman used to come to her from the sky, out to her on the rock where she was at Gorokan," Ms Ryan told an inquest at Parramatta Coroners Court.

"She also said the wolfman would one day come and take her to the aliens."

When Ms Hutchinson told her she was pregnant with Leonie, she also told her she had "stage four cervical cancer" and she wanted her child to be adopted, possibly by Ms Ryan's mother, if she did not get better.

Ms Ryan went to Scone after Leonie's birth and Ms Hutchinson told her "the world was going to end in the year 2000 and aliens were going to come and take her and Leonie away".

Adoption was not discussed, but on the topic of cancer Ms Hutchinson said she was "in the clear".

When Ms Ryan went back to Scone the next year, she was told by people who answered the door at Ms Hutchinson's unit that she had moved a few doors away and given up her daughter for adoption.

At the new address she found blankets draped over the windows and no one answered the door.

When Ms Ryan was alerted by police about Leonie's disappearance, she found they were using a photograph of the wrong girl in seeking information from the public.

Instead of Leonie, they were using a photograph of one of Ms Ryan's daughters. Ms Ryan said she may have given the picture to Ms Hutchinson at some point.

Another friend who used to live with Ms Hutchinson, Tammy Bourke, told the coroner Leonie's mother would talk of "aliens and lights" and became increasingly paranoid after smoking cannabis.

She believed neighbours were listening to the pair speak and changed the lyrics of an Aerosmith song to sing "Katie's got a gun", saying she was going to shoot the neighbours.

Ms Bourke told the inquest: "Half the time Kate spoke, she didn't make sense anyway."

The inquest continues.