German backpacker Carolina Wilga's 'remarkable' survival in hostile outback terrain

Australia Broadcast Center

11-07-2025

The day her banged-up, broken-down Mitsubishi van was discovered wedged in the embankment of a rocky outcrop, Carolina Wilga had just spent the night alone in sub-zero temperatures.
There was evidence she tried hard to get her bogged vehicle out of the spot — but when a search and rescue plane spotted the car on Thursday, Carolina was nowhere to be found.
At that point, it had been 11 days since anybody had seen the 26-year-old German national alive.
She was far from the bustling coastal metropolis of Fremantle where a friend said she set off from on June 28.
She drove herself to the north-eastern extremity of Western Australia's rich agricultural lands, to the small grain-growing community of Beacon.
It was there at the local general store that she was last seen on June 29.
Ms Wilga made the unlikely decision to take the van she recently purchased and plunge even further into the depths of the great beyond, into a sparse and environmentally hostile nature reserve.
"A serious piece of bush," is how one local described it.
Nobody knew what she was doing out there, where she was trying to go and why.
It's a part of the world that historically not many people have dared to go, not even those who live on its fringes.
"It's a wonderful nature reserve and is full of rich and diverse flora and fauna," Wheatbelt-based Police Inspector Martin Glynn said.
"There are certainly other local places very much part of the tourist trail … but certainly this one wouldn't be one that people would visit normally, no."
And for good reason.
There are few obvious campsites in the expansive Karroun Hill Nature Reserve. There's barely a track.
Ms Wilga's van was found half a kilometre as the crow flies from what would be even considered a worn path.
Her disappearance triggered a huge search effort that progressively ramped up as the number of days since she was last seen ticked over.
Long-term Beacon resident Marilyn Dunne said her community rallied around the effort to find Ms Wilga.
"Everybody is talking about it, everybody is worried about it," she said.
"Everyone has got their own ideas about it and, of course, if they were asked to help, they would go in a moment."
Ms Dunne, who owns a station that borders the Karroun Hill Nature Reserve, said she had noticed it become more popular with visitors.
"More and more it's being advertised on tourist bureaus and on brochures and it's being recommended on maps, so I think we're going to need to make more warning signs for people," she said.
Tim Collins, director of Upstream Aviation, has been involved in aerial searches, mostly of water, but said the terrain where Carolina's car was found presented significant difficulties.
"It's hard to see somebody unless you're in a very open space," he said.
"If you've got any kind of bush or any kind of trees, or are sheltered under a tree, it's very hard to find somebody."
Those on the ground and in the air searching for Ms Wilga never lost hope of finding her, even on the 12th day.
"You're always so hopeful with these missing-person situations," Inspector Glynn said.
Despite the odds, Carolina Wilga survived.
The news of her being found alive broke after 5pm, local time, on Friday.
Save for being ravaged by mosquitoes, she was not seriously hurt. Though the mental anguish she likely experienced was significant.
"She's been through an incredible journey of trauma," Inspector Glynn said.
A member of the public miraculously found Ms Wilga walking on a trail along the edge of the bush reserve, many kilometres from where she left her car.
The fact she was walking at all was a miracle, and the world caught their first glimpse of her as she walked up the stairs to a waiting plane at the local airfield.
She will now be checked over at a hospital back in Perth.
Carolina Wilga is now safe and well, no doubt with a remarkable story to tell.