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23rd Aug 2015

British tourist saved after leaving S.O.S message in the sand

We went walkabout...

Simon Lloyd

A British man has been saved thanks to writing S.O.S into the sand.

After going missing in a remote part of northern Australia, Geoff Keys’ disappearance prompted a huge helicopter search.

As he explained in his blog, Geoff had been trying to locate an isolated waterfall. As his map told him that it was near to his camp site, he decided he would walk part of the way before swimming the rest down part of a creek.

When the realisation dawned on him that he was not going to make it to his desired location before nightfall, he turned back towards camp.

“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 quite reasonably asks.

After swimming downstream for some time, he got out to scrawl the message in the sand, along with the date.

Despite spending a further night in the wilderness, he was eventually found.

H/T BBC

Topics:

Australia,Travel