Picture: BRITTANY DENTON
“DURING those last two days I was starting to get panicky and thinking ‘this could be the end for me’,” Mount Gambier woman Brooke Phillips said of her six days stranded in a remote outback area last month.
“You just start to think ‘why is no one driving down this road? If I leave the car now without supplies I will not make it far and they might not ever find me’.”
What was meant to be a 70km drive between two remote communities in Western Australia became a harrowing ordeal for Ms Phillips, who resorted to drinking windscreen wiper fluid and her own urine to stay alive.
The 40-year-old took a wrong turn and soon after her car became bogged, leaving her stranded in the scorching desert with only half a litre of water, a random assortment of food and her cat and dog for company.
“I was working in a remote community store and the job was ceased, so I was moving from one place to the next,” Ms Phillips told The Border Watch yesterday after her story had reached a national audience.
“The drive was meant to be just over an hour long and I was taking supplies to my partner’s house, so I threw a few things in the car.”
Among the supplies that saved her life were pasta sauce, Cruskits, coconut cream and red cordial.
“What was most frustrating was I had powdered milk, coffee, two-minute noodles – all these foods that could have kept me going if only I had more water,” Ms Phillips said.
“I was rationing out the food between myself and my cat Shadow and my puppy.”
After one long night in her car, Ms Phillips contemplated walking 30km back to the community she had just left.
It would mean a gruelling trek to Blackstone – about 1700km from Perth – with no shelter from the sun as temperatures hovered around 35 degrees.
“I slept the first night and started digging holes around my tyres the next morning,” she said.
“On that first day I wondered if I should leave the car and walk back, I was not that far out of the community and could have probably walked back in two days.
“I am really lucky I stayed with the car because I must have picked up some kind of bug just before I left and the next day all I could do was lay in the car with the air con going, I was really ill.
“I might have made it that 15km the first day and then I would have been in trouble.”
With only half a tank of fuel when she left, Ms Phillips ran out of petrol at midday on her last day in the bush.
“At that stage I had no liquid items left and I was so dehydrated – when I drank the soapy water it went straight through me,” she said.
“When the air con gave in I was really terrified.”
A land and air search was under way and a delirious Ms Phillips was found by a group of community members – among them a group involved in the search that afternoon.
“Imogen knocked on my window and the only thing I could say was ‘water’ – I was pretty out of it,” she said.
“I did not even hear the car pull up.”
Ms Phillips said she buried her beloved cat Shadow yesterday.
“I have had Shadow for eight years, so I was devastated,” she said.
“She had been unwell before the trip and it must have been too much for her. She was my survival companion, so I was really sad to lose her.”
Ms Phillips said she now keeps 20 litres of water in her car, even for short trips.
“I am very lucky – after reading about people who have died out there recently I understand how devastating it can be,” she said.
“I owe a lot of thanks to everyone involved in the rescue and the people who found me.”
