Lost and found: Bush backpacker found after 12 days

A “BACK from the dead” backpacker who was lost in the Australian bush for 12 days was last night recovering in hospital after he was found by chance by two hikers.

Hundreds of people helped search for Jamie Neale, 19, from north London, yet it was sightseers who found him in the Blue Mountains national park, west of Sydney, yesterday morning.

His father Richard Cass, who flew to Australia a week ago to join the search, said he had given up hope.

He was waiting at the airport to fly home yesterday morning when he received a text message from police saying there was good news.

“The words ‘good news’ told me everything. That was when I knew he was safe,” he said.

Cass told reporters he had been so sure he would never see his son alive again that he had even said goodbye by burying a red rose and lighting a candle at the national park where he also scratched his son’s name and date of birth into the ground.

“He’s come back from the dead,” he said. “I’m just so pleased to see him. It’s fantastic.”

The pair were reunited at Katoomba’s Blue Mountains Hospital where Neale is being treated for dehydration and exposure. He is expected to remain in hospital for several days before returning to Britain.

Cass said his son was “gaunt and scrawny” after surviving on seeds and plants.

“He said he was losing faith in the idea there was a God every time the helicopter flew over and he was waving and shouting and nothing happened,” his father said. “He thought he was going to die.”

“I’m going to kick hisarse. The millions that have been spent on this search, the man hours and woman hours that have gone into it... all because he goes out on a walk without his mobile phone. The only teenager in the world who goes on a 10-mile (16km) hike and leaves his mobile phone behind.”

New South Wales assistant commissioner Denis Clifford described it as “like searching for a needle in a haystack” and said the lack of details about Neale’s intended route “frustrated the search effort”.

The search involved up to 100 people a day.

Neale said thinking about his mother Jean Neale got him through the “ordeal” as he waited for help.

Jean Neale said: “He said to me ‘All I wanted to do was hear your voice’.”

“He said that thinking of me helped him get through this ordeal.

“He was worried about me and how I would take the news.”

Jean Neale, 49, from Muswell Hill, north London, said: “I never gave up hope. “As far as I was concerned he was coming home.”

“He’ll have one hell of a story to tell when he starts university, let’s just hope he doesn’t repeat it at any time,” his mother added.