Mother and daughter escape from kidnap ordeal

A MOTHER and daughter on holiday in Australia escaped unharmed from a 13-hour night-time ordeal in an Outback forest after they were abducted

The man fired a shot to force the women into bushland in a national park before handcuffing them to a tree for more than seven hours.

Police said the gunman struck up a conversation with the two women on Saturday afternoon as they emerged from the water after swimming at the popular Tolmer Falls in Litchfield National Park, about 62 miles south of Darwin, the capital of the Northern Territory state.

He forced the German tourists to hand over money and then ordered them to walk into the forest, police said. “They were reluctant, and he discharged the firearm at least once in order to enforce compliance,” Northern Territory Police Acting Commander Bert Hofer told reporters.

The man left the women sometime before midnight. In a few hours the mother, aged 50, worked her hands from the cuffs and helped free her 16-year old daughter.

Disoriented, they staggered through the bush until daylight, when they found their parked car. But the car and an emergency phone nearby had been damaged, and they were only able to drive a short way.

A passing car picked them up and took them to a nearby town.

“They were extremely traumatised, but suffered no apparent physical injuries,” police spokeswoman Denise Hurley.

In a media statement police said the women had not been sexually assaulted. The names of the women and their home town in Germany have not been released. Police closed the park and are stopping all cars travelling through the area. The women described their abductor as a clean-shaven, heavyset man in his early 30s with blond hair and blue-grey eyes. He was thought to be driving a late-model Toyota four-wheel drive wagon.

Ms Hurley said there was nothing to suggest that the kidnapping was linked to the suspected murder of British tourist Peter Falconio in the Northern Territory on July 14, last year, about 620 miles south of Litchfield National Park. Mr Falconio, 28, is believed to have been shot by a man who then attempted to abduct his girlfriend, Joanne Lees, after flagging down their vehicle on an Outback highway. Ms Lees escaped.

Mr Falconio’s body has never been found, and no arrests have been made despite one of the nation’s biggest manhunts.

But police on Friday said they were investigating a new “person of interest” in the Falconio case who was arrested last week and remains in custody on an unrelated charge in South Australia state.

Australia has recently been hit by a spate of fatal attacks on travellers.

In April, British backpacker Caroline Stuttle died after falling from a bridge in the northeastern town of Bundaberg. Police believe she was pushed by an attacker trying to rob her.

In June 2000, a man torched the Palace Backpackers Hostel in Childers, close to Bundaberg, killing seven tourists from Ireland, Britain, the Netherlands, Australia, South Korea and Japan.