A British tourist who was lost for two days in a remote area of northern Australia says he was very lucky that a search and rescue team spotted his distress message scrawled on a small beach, saving his life.
In an attempt to find Elliot falls, 63-year-old Geoff Keys wrote in his blog, he lost his way and spent two nights in the bush.
Keys had been camping in the Jardine National Park in the state of Queensland in July with some friends when he decided to explore and find the waterfall.
telling the story of his ordeal on his blog Keys wrote that the map he had showed it was not far away from his campsite so he decided to walk some of the way and swim the rest in a creek.
“My outfit consisted of swimming trunks, a pair of swimming shorts over them, a T-shirt and a hat.”
When he was unsuccessful, Mr Keys decided to stop swimming and return to his campsite.
“Instead of turning round and swimming back upstream, I decided to take to the bush and cut across to the track. It was nearly dark. I had no shoes. What was I thinking of?” he wrote.
Keys says he tried to find his way until around 2am before giving up the search for his campsite for the night. His friends had reported his absence and a helicopter search began the next day.
The Brit spent two nights (27 and 28 July) in the wild before Australian rescuers noticed the message he wrote in the sand on the creek beach and managed to lift him to safety.
Police said they had been on the verge of re-directing their search to another area of dense bush land when they saw the SOS.
Photo credit: Queensland Police Service