Carolina Wilga: Survival expert Ky Furneaux praises German backpacker’s remarkable mental fortitude

A survival expert has praised German backpacker Carolina Wilga’s “amazing strength of character” after the young woman survived an astonishing 12 days in outback WA. The Australian bush is “like no other” according to highly-published survivalist Ky Furneaux. The fact Ms Wilga, a young woman unfamiliar with the challenging terrain of the remote Wheatbelt — and who was alone — managed to keep putting one foot in front of the other, long after it seemed like all hope was lost, is nothing short of “remarkable”, she said. “The mind plays tricks on you in those sort of situations and you’re kept in this constant state of fear,” Ms Furneaux said. “She would’ve been terrified, and dealing with that plus high levels of anxiety and uncertainty day after day, night after night. “Just being able to control your mind in those situations is huge. “The thing people forget is that as night out there, it’s going to be blacker than black. Everything sounds far bigger in the bush at night. A kangaroo can sound like a rhinoceros.” Then there’s the hypothermia, the detox process from not eating the amounts of food your body is used to, low blood sugar, dehydration, and exhaustion to deal with. “That all causes confusion, which can end up making you walk in circles, which we as humans already have a tendency to do,” she said. Ms Wilga was found on a remote road on Friday afternoon, about 24km from where her bogged Mitsubishi Delica van was discovered by police a day earlier. The 26-year-old was spotted waving her hands by Wheatbelt resident Tania French, who was driving back from Beacon. Ms Furneaux said while every situation was different, “exposure and water consumption were the first things that Carolina would’ve had to worry about”. “In every survival scenario you’re going to have to assess your individual situation — how far you’ve travelled, how far you’re from civilisation, who knows you’re missing,” she said. “The Australian bush is like no other. It can get hot as hell during the day and then freezing overnight. “You can last up to 21 days without food, but in the Australian climate you get about two days without water before you’re in trouble. “She was obviously able to manage her body core temperature and access water to have made it so long. “It’s nothing short of amazing.” While Ms Wilga was lost, temperatures in the Wheatbelt dropped as low as -2.6C. “The human spirit is incredible. We tend to think we’ll give up far sooner than we actually will,” Ms Furneaux said. “But it takes a real survival mentality to be able to stand up and keep going and put that one foot in front of the other.” Detective Acting Inspector Jessica Securo said Ms Wilga left her car and set out on foot across the harsh terrain just one day after getting stranded in the Karroun Hill Nature Reserve, thinking it would be her best bet at coming across someone, or a road. But knowing what she knows, Ms Furneaux said she would’ve tried to stay at the car “until it became fairly helpless or hopeless”. The former Naked and Afraid contestant said a human figure in dense scrub was much harder to see from the air than a vehicle, and there were ways to make yourself more visible too. “Spread bright colours on your vehicle with clothes or anything you have with you, polish the roof of the car so it’s shiny,” Ms Furneaux said. “In a vehicle you have access to a lot of assets that you can’t carry with you.” Assets like a cigarette lighter to create a fire, seat covers you can use as insulation, tyres you can burn to create smoke, and shelter, she said. “A metal vehicle can get very cold as temperatures drop, so create yourself a seat cover sleeping bag and then you’re out of the wind and off the ground where the temperatures get sucked away from your body,” she said. Ms Wilga was last seen two weeks ago visiting the Beacon co-op general store, about 313km north-east of Perth, at 12.10pm on June 29. Her family later alerted local police in Germany, concerned for her welfare after a lack of regular contact. WA Police started investigating after a report from INTERPOL. The young backpacker had left a hostel in Fremantle on the weekend she vanished following conversations she was considering heading to the Eastern States and exploring regional WA. Ms Furneaux urged anyone venturing to remote or outback Australia not to do so without telling someone where they were going and when they expected to get phone signal. “A lot of survival scenarios can be mitigated before they even happen by doing this,” she said.