German backpacker Carolina Wilga has been found alive after 12 days missing in the remote Western Australian outback.
Wilga was found by a member of the public limping along the roadside in Karroun Hill Reserve, more than 300 kilometres north-east of Perth in the Wheatbelt region, police said.
First images after the incredible breakthrough show Wilga arriving back in Beacon and walking from a police vehicle onto a plane to be taken to Perth for medical treatment.
“As you can imagine from the trauma she’s suffered over the last few days, she’s obviously been through a great deal,” Inspector Martin Glynn said.
“She has a number of significant minor injuries … she’s been ravaged by mosquitoes.
“She’s obviously coped in some amazing conditions.”
Police are yet to establish how Wilga disappeared.
“She’s in a fragile position at the moment,” Glynn said.
“This is a great outcome for all those involved. I think once we do hear her story it will be a remarkable story.”
9News Perth reporter Rachel Smith saw the moment Wilga arrived back in Beacon.
“What a moment, we’re still in disbelief, and it’s something that we’ve all been watching and waiting for.
“We saw her step out of the police car and head up the steps into the police airplane, she had a jumper, a skirt, and just one shoe on.
“She was surrounded by all of those officers who had spent hours searching for her out in the Wheatbelt here.”
Police released new footage today of Wilga’s bogged van, showing just how stuck it was when the backpacker abandoned it.
In a press conference this afternoon soon before Wilga was found, Glynn said police believed she had made “extensive efforts” to free her vehicle from remote terrain after it became bogged.
“She’d used MAXTRAX and pieces of wood to try to free the vehicle from its location but unfortunately was unsuccessful,” he said.
“Quite frankly it’s really inhospitable ground to move through easily, and as I said, it has rained recently, there are wet spots and vehicles will get bogged often.”
Trackers deployed to Beacon had struggled to find any evidence of the 26-year-old leaving her vehicle, Glynn had said.
“The area has been subject to some rain and it’s very firm ground so unfortunately we haven’t been able to identify a direction of travel,” he said.
Police today conducted a 300-metre search around the vehicle for any sign of the missing backpacker.