Romanian Tourist Lost In Australian Desert Found After Six Days

Police said the man is lucky to be alive after setting off from Yulara, near Uluru, on a 45-kilometer trek to Lake Amadeus last week.

 

The tourist had only taken four liters of water with him, which he ran out of three days into the hike. Exhausted and dehydrated, the man became lost when he decided to walk back to Yulara. He spend another three days without any food or water.

 

But he did manage to get to within mobile phone range and raised the alarm, contacting his relatives in Romania to tell them that he was lost in the desert. He gave the coordinates of his location from his GPS and police were alerted to the missing man on Wednesday.

 

A search was mounted immediately using a helicopter and the man was found 22km from Yulara and was taken to hospital, where he is currently in good condition.

 

"This particular individual was an experienced hiker who had trekked through South America and Asia. But even someone with his experience almost failed to survive (…). He failed to take enough water and clearly failed to anticipate the reality of hiking in such extreme temperatures as we have in central Australia,” said Kerry Harris, officer in charge of the Northern Territory Police missing persons unit.

 

Three people have disappeared in the same area over the past few years, and police said that despite the huge amounts of resources used to try to locate them, all are still missing.