German backpacker found alive after 12 days missing in Western Australian • FRANCE 24 English

12 days after going missing in the Western Australian bush, German backpacker Carolina Vilga was miraculously found alive, a passing motorist encountered the 26-year-old near a nature reserve on Friday afternoon, 24 km west of where her vehicle had been abandoned. Police reported her as being ravaged by mosquitoes, but in surprisingly good health after the ordeal she’d been through. Karolina presented as exhausted, dehydrated, and hungry. She had minor injuries uh such as cuts and bruises. Karolina was flown back to Perth at about 5:30 p.m. where she is receiving further medical assistance. Karolina Vilga had last been seen entering a shop in the outback town of Beacon about 250 km north of Perth on June 29th. She had left her car after it got stuck in some rough terrain. The search for her involved helicopters and planes flying over the sparsely populated wheat belt region, an expanse of 154,862 km. While police saluted the young Germans bravery and resilience, they also said her survival was down to luck, something she herself acknowledges. Look, she um is still in disbelief um that she was able to survive. Um, in her mind, she had convinced herself that she was not going to be located. Um, I mean, you know, 11 days out there is significant. Um, so I’m sure she got to a point where she thought no one’s coming. Police said that Carolina Ilga had been backpacking around the country for two years and had been working at mining sites in Western Australia.

Australian authorities said they found a 26-year-old German backpacker “safe and well” after she had been missing in a remote part of the country’s northwest for almost two weeks.
#Australia #Germany #backpacker

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12 comments

  3. Good on her for not being the typical helpless social media generation person and having some basic survival skills 👍

    Obligatory "you should always stay with your car in situations like this" btw, the car is a lot easier to spot after all.

  4. Australian outback is not a tourist destination… why'd you think Australians go all around the world as tourists but not there?… They visit 'tamed' lands, but keep theirs untamed… wild!

  5. Im so happy she's safe and alive! I bet her family is excited to get her back to Germany. Just get her home and safe. Wow, I can't believe she lasted that long out there…
    Poor thing, im so happy she's alive 😊 Love and prayers from michigan 😊
    12 days….

  7. As a german I congratulate my fellow citizen on surviving and I also wonder who is going to pay for the rescue mission that involved searching an area of 158 000 km² by means of helicopters and planes.

  9. Glad she is alive. You can't go to such a place with a car, even if it's a regular 4WD, because dry and broken wood sticking out from the ground can easily puncture the tires and cause flat tires.

  12. Be prepared!! Carry water, food, satellite phone, an epirb, actual maps, extra fuel, tell people where you are going and time frame when travelling in remote outback Australia. It's huge and isolated with limited phone coverage.

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