July 15, 2025 • 12 mins
You’ve likely heard about the journey of Carolina Wilga, the German backpacker who got lost in the unforgiving outback of Western Australia.
Last Friday, after 11 nights, Wilga was found by a member of the public while walking on the edge of a nature reserve.
Police said she has endured the harshest of conditions, including freezing temperatures and relentless mosquito bites.
We’ll tell you what we know about the 26-year-old’s journey in today’s podcast.
Hosts: Sam Koslowski and Billi FitzSimons
Producer: Orla Maher
Thanks to FoodSwitch for supporting this episode – head to foodswitch.com.au to download the free app and try it out at your next grocery shop.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Already and this this is the Daily OS.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
This is the Daily OS. Oh, now it makes sense.
Good morning, and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Wednesday,
the sixteenth of July. I'm Billy fitz Simon's.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
I'm Sam Kazlowski.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
You've likely heard about the journey of Carolina Wilga, the
German backpacker who got lost in the unforgiving outback of
Western Australia last Friday. After eleven nights. Wilga was found
by a member of the public while walking on the
edge of a nature reserve. Billy said she had endured
the harshest of conditions, including freezing temperatures and relentless mosquito rides.
(00:43):
We'll tell you what you need to know about the
twenty six year old's journey in today's podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Billy, this story really does resonate with me because earlier
this year I was on a ski holiday with friends
in Japan to celebrate thirtieth birthdays. I actually also got lost.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
So I was wondering what the link was there.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
It was six minutes, not eleven days, but in those
six minutes, I really did feel like I had no
idea where I was. Wow, So I can only imagine.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Well imagine doing that by yourself and for it being
about a billion times longer.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Yeah, I mean I was I needed three days to
recover mess.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
You we're with like thirty friends.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Yeah yeah, but the six minutes that changed my life.
Let's talk about eleven days of that. Where does this
story start?
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Okay? So this starts with a woman called Carolina Wilga.
And as I said, she is a German backpacker. She
is twenty six years old and she has been in
Australia backpacking for about two years now. She's been in
Western Australia and she's mostly been living in.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Hostel A solid effort.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Yes, And now go through what we know about her journey,
and just keep in mind that all of this information
we know we know from W eight Police, who have
obviously been very involved in searching for kral. So her
last contact with her friends was on Sunday, the twenty
ninth of June, when she was known to be in
the Beacon area, which is about three hundred kilometers northeast
(02:11):
of Perth, and police said that she had told friends
and family that she was interested in traveling around remote
and regional wa She really wanted I mean, we know
that Wa is such a vast, massive landscape, and she
really wanted to go around traveling, seeing the outback and
seeing what I guess Wa has to offer.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
So it's not like she stumbled on these remote and
regional parts of the state she went looking for in
the adventure exactly.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
So then after the twenty ninth of June, her friends
and family did not hear it from her. Now, the
first the public heard about it was on the seventh
of July. That is when Wa police announced it publicly.
They shared her photo, they shared it with the media
and they said that this German backpacker has gone missing,
and they said if anyone knows any information, please tell
(03:00):
the police.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
It's quite a solid amount of time, isn't it, From
the twenty ninth of June until the seventh of July,
So we've got about an eight day period before the
public was informed about her disappearance exactly.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
And then it was three days after that. So on
the tenth of July that police found the car that
Carolina had been traveling in in Karoon Hill. Now that
is about one hundred kilometers north of where she had
last been seen in Beacon, So they knew the car
that she had been traveling in, and they literally just
found it abandoned in this area, and it appeared that
(03:33):
the vehicle had been abandoned. Carolina was not anywhere near
this car. She didn't appear to be anywhere, and it
had things like food and water and clothes in it.
So it was quite a confusing scene for police to
come across in their search for Carolina. And police said
that it appeared the car, which was a Mitsubishi Van,
(03:54):
had suffered mechanical issues, so the car wasn't working. Now,
this information provided context for where Wilga could be, obviously,
because it appeared that she could be at the karun
Hill Nature Reserve. Now, I don't know how familiar you
are with WA outback, but the karun Hill Nature Reserve
is about three hundred thousand hectes enormous, yes, So to
(04:17):
put that into perspective, that's about a quarter of the
size of Greater Sydney. So that kind of gives you
an understanding of both the area that Carolina was lost
in and the extent of the area of the search
that WA police were now searching.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
And I can only imagine that the landscape and the
environment in that area is incredibly.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Harsh, very harsh, and that is what police kept saying.
They said that there is diverse animal wildlife there. They
also said that it can be very dangerous if you
don't know where you're going, because navigating there is really hard.
They also said that at night, the temperature was getting
to blow zero degrees, it was getting down to negative
(04:58):
two degrees, which was concerning because obviously police didn't know
that she had or police presumed that she didn't have
any shelter because she didn't have her car with her. Yeah,
so she was just in freezing, freezing conditions. They also
know that it was raining for a couple of days there,
so again just the harshest of conditions to be lost in.
(05:20):
And also I think another piece of interesting information is
that media was actually told not to go to this
area because of how harsh it was.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
That's really interesting. So we have this big development on
the tenth of July, police find and abandoned Mitsubishi in
this area that they believe that the twenty six year
old backpacker is then what happened.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
So then last Friday, on the eleventh of July, so
this is one day after police said that they had
found the car. Police announced that a member of the
public had found Carolina.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
It's pretty amazing in this type of story that we
actually have a positive resolution. I mean, if you kind
of stop this place cast episode here, you'd almost kind
of guess that they found somebody who was deceased on
that something terrible had happened. That's not the case here. Yeah. No.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
So they said that at four point thirty pm on Friday,
Carolina was found after she flagged down a passing car
on the edge of the Karun Hill Nature Reserve. Now,
they said she was about twenty four kilometers of where
her vehicle had been left, so we can presume or
police have confirmed that she walked that distance. So she
(06:29):
had walked up to twenty four kilometers over those eleven days,
although probably a lot more than that. And in terms
of the state that she was in, police said that
she was exhausted, dehydrated, and hungry.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
I can only imagine, yeah, you can.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
That all makes sense, and that remarkably she only had
minor injuries like cuts and bruises. Police also said that
she had been ravaged by mosquitoes, which I just can't
imagine that would be horrific, and she had been flown
to Perth to receive metalw cool assistance. That kind of
only goes to her physical state, though, In terms of
(07:04):
the mental and emotional state she was in, police said
that she was completely traumatized and overwhelmed by the experience
that she had had, and they also said that she
was just in disbelief that she had survived. They basically
said that she had come to terms with not surviving
and she just believed that no one was ever going
to find her. Here's a bit of what police said
(07:27):
from a press conference on Saturday.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
In her mind, she had convinced herself that she was
not going to be located. I mean that, you know,
eleven days out there is significant. So I'm sure she
got to a point where she thought no one's coming.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Look, she's coming to terms with what's happened, and we're
just giving her that emotional support that she needs.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Okay, So, Billy, in the couple of days since the
discovery of Carolina, and she's obviously now recovering in hospital,
have we learned any more details like what actually happens
to the car for example.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Yeah, So, earlier this week, Carolina released a statement via
WA Police explaining why exactly she abandoned her car. So
she said, this is a quote directly from her Some
people might wonder why I even left my car, even
though I had water, food, and clothing there. The answer
is I lost control of the car and rolled down
(08:20):
a slope. In the crash, I hit my head significantly
as a result of the accident. I left my car
in a state of confusion and got lost.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Wow. There are a lot of layers in that, and
you can just imagine the chaos and the disoriented feelings
that she was going.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Through, which is exactly what police have said that she
was so disoriented in the process of this. They did
add a little bit more context to that, so they
said that when she left the car, she actually looked
at the direction of the sun to help her navigate
where to go, and she thought the best idea was
to go west because she believed that she was going
to be able to find someone or find a car
(08:56):
to help her. Essentially, what she didn't realize is that
it would take her eleven days to find someone.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
And it's also incredible in the big scheme of the
area of the park that it was only and I
say that kind of without the first out experience of
that twenty four kilometers between her and the car. That's
not a lot of ground over eleven days to cover,
but I'm sure she felt hundreds of kilometers away from
her car because of you know, the stress of the
(09:25):
situation that she was in. And that was all until
she was discovered by this person. Have we heard anything
from the person who discovered her.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Yeah, So the woman who found her did speak to
WA Today, which is a local newspaper there, and she said,
I pulled over and got out and I gave her
a hug. She was crying. It was pretty emotional, all right.
I said, everybody's looking for you. Everybody's been worried. She
didn't know how long she had been out there. She
asked the date and then said, my mom will be worried.
(09:53):
It's been too long.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
And that is a beautiful kind of first sentiment to say.
As you're discovered from a well can only be described
as a near death experience. Do we know how Carolina
is and what's next for her? She heading back to
the hostels?
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Yeah, great question. So police said that she is still recovering,
and like we said that the physical injuries remarkably weren't
too much, but it's the emotional state and the trauma
that she has endured that will take a bit longer
for her to recover from. They did say that she
is just so in love with Australia and the response
(10:30):
that she has got since she has been saved has
been amazing, and that she wants to stay here. She
wants to stay in Australia. Police said that she says
she has a lot more travel that she still wants
to do hopefully on beaten tracks, yes, and that she
hasn't yet traveled to Australia's East Coast, which is next
on her list.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
Well. I hope that she perhaps brings a buddy along
for some of those journeys. But a really good story
of human survival and can unity effort. There's been a
couple of amazing survival stories like Caroline the story in Australia.
In the last kind of twelve months or so, I
remember us talking about a young man in the Blue
Mountains in New South Wales who also survived a number
(11:12):
of days on just one musli bar. I think it
was so.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
It's remarkable what humans can do when they are in
that survival Mode.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Incredible story. Thank you for bringing a bit of light
and happy ending to a new story, Billy that that
really means a lot. Thank you, and thank you for
joining us on the Daily Os this morning. We're going
to be back in your headphones this afternoon with the headlines.
If you've got time, it would mean a lot to us.
Just if you click follow on whatever podcast app you're
listening to, it's a really great way for the podcast
apps Spotify, Apple to know that you're there and that
(11:43):
you like what we do. We'll be back with those
headlines later today. Until then, have a good rest of
your morning.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Aarunda
Bunjelung Kalgutin woman from Gadigal Country. The Daily oz acknowledges
that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the
Gadigal people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torrestrate
island and nations. We pay our respects to the first
peoples of these countries, both past and present.
Already and this this is the Daily OS.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
This is the Daily OS. Oh, now it makes sense.
Good morning, and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Wednesday,
the sixteenth of July. I'm Billy fitz Simon's.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
I'm Sam Kazlowski.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
You've likely heard about the journey of Carolina Wilga, the
German backpacker who got lost in the unforgiving outback of
Western Australia last Friday. After eleven nights. Wilga was found
by a member of the public while walking on the
edge of a nature reserve. Billy said she had endured
the harshest of conditions, including freezing temperatures and relentless mosquito rides.
(00:43):
We'll tell you what you need to know about the
twenty six year old's journey in today's podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Billy, this story really does resonate with me because earlier
this year I was on a ski holiday with friends
in Japan to celebrate thirtieth birthdays. I actually also got lost.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
So I was wondering what the link was there.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
It was six minutes, not eleven days, but in those
six minutes, I really did feel like I had no
idea where I was. Wow, So I can only imagine.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Well imagine doing that by yourself and for it being
about a billion times longer.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Yeah, I mean I was I needed three days to
recover mess.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
You we're with like thirty friends.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Yeah yeah, but the six minutes that changed my life.
Let's talk about eleven days of that. Where does this
story start?
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Okay? So this starts with a woman called Carolina Wilga.
And as I said, she is a German backpacker. She
is twenty six years old and she has been in
Australia backpacking for about two years now. She's been in
Western Australia and she's mostly been living in.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Hostel A solid effort.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Yes, And now go through what we know about her journey,
and just keep in mind that all of this information
we know we know from W eight Police, who have
obviously been very involved in searching for kral. So her
last contact with her friends was on Sunday, the twenty
ninth of June, when she was known to be in
the Beacon area, which is about three hundred kilometers northeast
(02:11):
of Perth, and police said that she had told friends
and family that she was interested in traveling around remote
and regional wa She really wanted I mean, we know
that Wa is such a vast, massive landscape, and she
really wanted to go around traveling, seeing the outback and
seeing what I guess Wa has to offer.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
So it's not like she stumbled on these remote and
regional parts of the state she went looking for in
the adventure exactly.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
So then after the twenty ninth of June, her friends
and family did not hear it from her. Now, the
first the public heard about it was on the seventh
of July. That is when Wa police announced it publicly.
They shared her photo, they shared it with the media
and they said that this German backpacker has gone missing,
and they said if anyone knows any information, please tell
(03:00):
the police.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
It's quite a solid amount of time, isn't it, From
the twenty ninth of June until the seventh of July,
So we've got about an eight day period before the
public was informed about her disappearance exactly.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
And then it was three days after that. So on
the tenth of July that police found the car that
Carolina had been traveling in in Karoon Hill. Now that
is about one hundred kilometers north of where she had
last been seen in Beacon, So they knew the car
that she had been traveling in, and they literally just
found it abandoned in this area, and it appeared that
(03:33):
the vehicle had been abandoned. Carolina was not anywhere near
this car. She didn't appear to be anywhere, and it
had things like food and water and clothes in it.
So it was quite a confusing scene for police to
come across in their search for Carolina. And police said
that it appeared the car, which was a Mitsubishi Van,
(03:54):
had suffered mechanical issues, so the car wasn't working. Now,
this information provided context for where Wilga could be, obviously,
because it appeared that she could be at the karun
Hill Nature Reserve. Now, I don't know how familiar you
are with WA outback, but the karun Hill Nature Reserve
is about three hundred thousand hectes enormous, yes, So to
(04:17):
put that into perspective, that's about a quarter of the
size of Greater Sydney. So that kind of gives you
an understanding of both the area that Carolina was lost
in and the extent of the area of the search
that WA police were now searching.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
And I can only imagine that the landscape and the
environment in that area is incredibly.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Harsh, very harsh, and that is what police kept saying.
They said that there is diverse animal wildlife there. They
also said that it can be very dangerous if you
don't know where you're going, because navigating there is really hard.
They also said that at night, the temperature was getting
to blow zero degrees, it was getting down to negative
(04:58):
two degrees, which was concerning because obviously police didn't know
that she had or police presumed that she didn't have
any shelter because she didn't have her car with her. Yeah,
so she was just in freezing, freezing conditions. They also
know that it was raining for a couple of days there,
so again just the harshest of conditions to be lost in.
(05:20):
And also I think another piece of interesting information is
that media was actually told not to go to this
area because of how harsh it was.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
That's really interesting. So we have this big development on
the tenth of July, police find and abandoned Mitsubishi in
this area that they believe that the twenty six year
old backpacker is then what happened.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
So then last Friday, on the eleventh of July, so
this is one day after police said that they had
found the car. Police announced that a member of the
public had found Carolina.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
It's pretty amazing in this type of story that we
actually have a positive resolution. I mean, if you kind
of stop this place cast episode here, you'd almost kind
of guess that they found somebody who was deceased on
that something terrible had happened. That's not the case here. Yeah. No.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
So they said that at four point thirty pm on Friday,
Carolina was found after she flagged down a passing car
on the edge of the Karun Hill Nature Reserve. Now,
they said she was about twenty four kilometers of where
her vehicle had been left, so we can presume or
police have confirmed that she walked that distance. So she
(06:29):
had walked up to twenty four kilometers over those eleven days,
although probably a lot more than that. And in terms
of the state that she was in, police said that
she was exhausted, dehydrated, and hungry.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
I can only imagine, yeah, you can.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
That all makes sense, and that remarkably she only had
minor injuries like cuts and bruises. Police also said that
she had been ravaged by mosquitoes, which I just can't
imagine that would be horrific, and she had been flown
to Perth to receive metalw cool assistance. That kind of
only goes to her physical state, though, In terms of
(07:04):
the mental and emotional state she was in, police said
that she was completely traumatized and overwhelmed by the experience
that she had had, and they also said that she
was just in disbelief that she had survived. They basically
said that she had come to terms with not surviving
and she just believed that no one was ever going
to find her. Here's a bit of what police said
(07:27):
from a press conference on Saturday.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
In her mind, she had convinced herself that she was
not going to be located. I mean that, you know,
eleven days out there is significant. So I'm sure she
got to a point where she thought no one's coming.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Look, she's coming to terms with what's happened, and we're
just giving her that emotional support that she needs.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Okay, So, Billy, in the couple of days since the
discovery of Carolina, and she's obviously now recovering in hospital,
have we learned any more details like what actually happens
to the car for example.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Yeah, So, earlier this week, Carolina released a statement via
WA Police explaining why exactly she abandoned her car. So
she said, this is a quote directly from her Some
people might wonder why I even left my car, even
though I had water, food, and clothing there. The answer
is I lost control of the car and rolled down
(08:20):
a slope. In the crash, I hit my head significantly
as a result of the accident. I left my car
in a state of confusion and got lost.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Wow. There are a lot of layers in that, and
you can just imagine the chaos and the disoriented feelings
that she was going.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Through, which is exactly what police have said that she
was so disoriented in the process of this. They did
add a little bit more context to that, so they
said that when she left the car, she actually looked
at the direction of the sun to help her navigate
where to go, and she thought the best idea was
to go west because she believed that she was going
to be able to find someone or find a car
(08:56):
to help her. Essentially, what she didn't realize is that
it would take her eleven days to find someone.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
And it's also incredible in the big scheme of the
area of the park that it was only and I
say that kind of without the first out experience of
that twenty four kilometers between her and the car. That's
not a lot of ground over eleven days to cover,
but I'm sure she felt hundreds of kilometers away from
her car because of you know, the stress of the
(09:25):
situation that she was in. And that was all until
she was discovered by this person. Have we heard anything
from the person who discovered her.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Yeah, So the woman who found her did speak to
WA Today, which is a local newspaper there, and she said,
I pulled over and got out and I gave her
a hug. She was crying. It was pretty emotional, all right.
I said, everybody's looking for you. Everybody's been worried. She
didn't know how long she had been out there. She
asked the date and then said, my mom will be worried.
(09:53):
It's been too long.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
And that is a beautiful kind of first sentiment to say.
As you're discovered from a well can only be described
as a near death experience. Do we know how Carolina
is and what's next for her? She heading back to
the hostels?
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Yeah, great question. So police said that she is still recovering,
and like we said that the physical injuries remarkably weren't
too much, but it's the emotional state and the trauma
that she has endured that will take a bit longer
for her to recover from. They did say that she
is just so in love with Australia and the response
(10:30):
that she has got since she has been saved has
been amazing, and that she wants to stay here. She
wants to stay in Australia. Police said that she says
she has a lot more travel that she still wants
to do hopefully on beaten tracks, yes, and that she
hasn't yet traveled to Australia's East Coast, which is next
on her list.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
Well. I hope that she perhaps brings a buddy along
for some of those journeys. But a really good story
of human survival and can unity effort. There's been a
couple of amazing survival stories like Caroline the story in Australia.
In the last kind of twelve months or so, I
remember us talking about a young man in the Blue
Mountains in New South Wales who also survived a number
(11:12):
of days on just one musli bar. I think it
was so.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
It's remarkable what humans can do when they are in
that survival Mode.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Incredible story. Thank you for bringing a bit of light
and happy ending to a new story, Billy that that
really means a lot. Thank you, and thank you for
joining us on the Daily Os this morning. We're going
to be back in your headphones this afternoon with the headlines.
If you've got time, it would mean a lot to us.
Just if you click follow on whatever podcast app you're
listening to, it's a really great way for the podcast
apps Spotify, Apple to know that you're there and that
(11:43):
you like what we do. We'll be back with those
headlines later today. Until then, have a good rest of
your morning.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Aarunda
Bunjelung Kalgutin woman from Gadigal Country. The Daily oz acknowledges
that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the
Gadigal people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torrestrate
island and nations. We pay our respects to the first
peoples of these countries, both past and present.
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