Aussies tell of Brit girl's miraculous escape

Australian rescuers today told of their amazement at British 19-year-old Louise Saunders' escape from a tourist spot.

"I can't believe she survived three days," one tough Aussie copper told The Rockall Times. "She is patently so ignorant, it's a miracle she even lasted eight hours." Others were equally unanimous in their praise. "It's an incredible achievement," said an Aborgine tracker, "to have managed to avoid all roads, hide from helicopters and slip past me into town demonstrates that this is no ordinary airhead."

Indeed, Louise was almost as stunned by the size of the rescue operation as she was that a new nail varnish now lasts up to eight hours longer without chipping. The overwhelmed beautician gushed at the assembled reporters this morning, telling them how she had survived on sugar-free chewing gum and by conserving energy by slowing her brain activity to a crawl.

She told of how, fixing her lipstick in a small hand-held mirror, she had accidentally strayed off the path. "In just five minutes, I was in the deepest jungle and I became really scared," she said. "So I thought the best to do would be to use up my mobile battery by calling my mum and boyfriend hundreds of miles away and say that I was stuck up a mountain. Once that didn't work, I decided to turn back and retrace my steps — but then I saw these really lovely flowers over to my left and I thought I'd have a look. By the time I had finished, I'd no idea which direction I wanted to go in."

Now hopelessly lost, Louise did all she could to survive. "I thought that I'd leave my drinks bottle on the floor in the hope someone would find it and track me down," she said. "But it got so desperate that I decided to write a love message on a tree with my red marker pen that I always carry with me. I wrote 'Louise S loves Stephen W for eva'." Psychiatrists have confirmed the truth of her claim and recommended she be kept under close observation.

Despite being warned retrospectively by her friends not to undertake the massive hour-and-a-half journey up a path to the top of a mountain, plucky Louise felt no fear and certainly no need to take any basic life-saving equipment with her. "It would be pointless to take a compass or knife or water and food rations with you on such a trip," one survival expert told us. "Unless of course you are unfeasibly dense and haven't mastered the art of following a line."

Once Louise had stepped off the path though, she had taken her life into her own hands. "Oh, we've one or two poisonous snakes about here. But they're pretty rare and they tend to run away from humans," a local told us, although he actually meant: "This is one of the most unforgiving places in the planet. One step wrong and Louise would almost have certainly been attacked by one of the 40 different types of lethal snake that are found in such huge abundance here."

Despite two helicopters being dispatched in the search for Louise, she steadfastly plodded on without trying to find them or contact them. As for the random path she chose to make her descent, one mathematician calculated that she had only a one in 10,000 chance of having chosen a route that did not cross one of the numerous roads constructed in the immediate area.

"I'm just glad to be alive," she cried on the news that she was safe. "Who won Celebrity Big Brother?"