SYDNEY: Two people have survived days without water in Australia’s hot and dusty outback, police said on Monday, ending a frenzied five-day air and land rescue effort.

Twenty-one-year-old Shaun Emitja and 14-year-old Mahesh Patrick were reported missing on Tuesday in the Harts Range area of central Australia.

They had failed to return to the remote community of Hermannsburg after a weekend away.

After their blue Nissan Navara was found abandoned and bogged down in a dirt track, police scoured the countryside using a helicopter and expert trackers.

The pair were feared to be in grave danger given a lack of water and the area’s extreme temperatures of more than 40 degrees Celsius in what is still the southern hemisphere’s spring.

But Northern Territory police said that the two men — who had become separated — were found alive and well by an “absolute miracle”.

Published in Dawn, October 19th, 2021