THE hero farmer who found a missing backpacker in the Australian Outback has revealed the first words she said to the lost woman.
Tania French discovered a dishevelled Carolina Wilga, 26, on the side of a remote stretch of road 12 days after the German first vanished.
Tania recalled the first interaction the pair shared after she noticed the woman waving her hands in the air as she stumbled across the road.
After pulling over, Tania comforted Carolina and gave her a big hug and told the woman about the desperate search efforts over her.
Tania told 7News: “I stopped. I went out and gave her a hug, I said, ‘look, everyone has been looking for you.’
“She couldn’t believe it. She didn’t realise how long [she had been missing].”
Carolina then called the farmer from Wheatbelt, Western Australia, her “guardian angel”.
Tania was picking up a truck from Beacon on Friday – about 186 miles northeast of Perth – when she first spotted Carolina.
The road she was travelling down is a rarely used route for locals and tourists with Tania saying her seeing the German was “meant to be”.
“The chance of me going down that road and meeting up with her was incredible,” the farmer said.
“It was meant to be, because no one goes up and down that road.”
She added the backpacker looked noticeably thin but appeared in good health despite not being seen or heard from since June 29.
The police suspected that Carolina had lost her bearings and wandered into the bushland when her van broke down in the Karroun Hill region of Western Australia’s outback.
The region is said to be an unforgiving expanse, described by authorities as remote, rocky and inhospitable.
After spending a night trying to repair the vehicle, Carolina decided to go off and find help on her own.
With minimal food and water, the German backpacker followed the sun’s position to head west.
The temperature in the area had dropped down to zero degrees at night and there was heavy rain.
At one point, she even reportedly sought refuge inside a cave and drank water from puddles to survive.
A Facebook page titled ‘Help Find Carolina was launched to assist the search as WA Police issued an urgent nationwide appeal for information.
Cops managed to track her last known texts which were sent to a friend in the early hours of June 29.
At 7 a.m., Carolina allegedly mentioned that she couldn’t deliver a book and a jerry can to her friend because she had “some stuff she needed to handle.”
She was then spotted in the van at a local store in the tiny town of Beacon on June 29 at around 12.10pm.
She went missing the following day.
The van — equipped with solar panels and water — was later found on Thursday, but there was no sign of the missing woman.
Tania would be the first person to see Carolina after the ordeal as she informed police of her incredible discovery.
WA police’s Martin Glynn told reporters on Friday that Carolina is now in good health and recovering.
He said: “As you can imagine, from the trauma she suffered for the last few days, she’s been obviously through a great deal.
“She does have some injuries. She’s been ravaged by mosquitoes.”
Carolina had been backpacking across Australia for two years and recently worked at mine sites in regional WA.
