British backpacker survived outback with lens solution
A British backpacker survives the Australian Outback for more than three days by drinking contact lens solution and his own urine.
Samuel Woodhead, 18, disappeared on Tuesday after he set out for a jog from a remote cattle station in a desolate part of Queensland.
His family believes he managed to stay alive for more than 72 hours in the scorching heat because he watched videos about the Marines and was determined to live up to the reputation of his war hero grandfather.
His mother, Claire Derry, said the chance discovery of packets of contact lenses in his rucksack helped sustain him in temperatures of around 40C.
Mr Woodhead, who is set on joining the Armed Forces, also drank his own urine in a desperate bid to keep going.
To be honest I was beginning to fear the worst. It’s been the worst three days of my life. Mother Claire Derry
Ms Derry, 54, said she feared her son may have died in horrific circumstances, believing he may have succumbed to dehydration or been bitten by a snake.
But as she flew out to Australia to join the hunt for her son, she was passed a message from the plane’s captain telling her he had been found.
“I sobbed, absolutely sobbed and I jumped up and hugged the air hostesses and the captain,” she told ITV News.
“To be honest I was beginning to fear the worst. It’s been the worst three days of my life, by a long way, since 5.30am Tuesday morning when two policemen knocked on my front door and told me they’d got a message from Australia and told me my son was missing.”
Training for the army
She said the fact he had been training for a career in the Armed Services was likely to have equipped him well for survival in the hostile environment.
“My father was a war hero and Sam was named after him and he’s always wanted to live up to that sort of reputation,” she said.
“He’s fearless and he wants to go into the Marines or the Army and it was because he was training ready for his interview with them that he was trying to keep fit all the time.
“He’s watched programmes and videos on the Marines and that’s why he would have known a lot about survival, I think, and that’s why we were fairly hopeful but we got less hopeful as time went on.
“He’s sunburnt and he can’t eat at the moment but apart from that I understand, he’s lost a lot of weight but he managed to smile when they picked him up.”
She added: “We understand he had no water for three days so he survived on his own urine and some contact lens solution he had with him but that was all he had over the last three nights.”
Mr Woodhead’s family said the teenager, a keen long-distance runner, owed his life to rescue workers who launched a helicopter search of the region after he was reported missing from Upshot Station, near the town of Longreach.
The former Brighton College student, from Richmond upon Thames, in Surrey, was today taken for a medical assessment before he was transferred to a hospital in Longreach.
