Hadi Nazari, who was lost in mountainous bushland in New South Wales for 13 days, believed he had been found by rescue helicopter teams only to realise they were fighting nearby bushfires, the hiker has told the ABC.
The 23-year-old Victorian medical student had set out from Kosciuszko national park’s Geehi camp on 23 December for a four-day hike with two friends, climbing Australia’s highest peak, Mount Kosciuszko, before returning via Hannels Spur on Boxing Day.
That morning, the trio were a short distance from one another on the track, when Nazari met a fork in the track and inadvertently followed the wrong path, he told ABC’s 7.30.
The experienced hiker said he soon found himself in “really thick terrain” and, with no phone battery, no navigation device and no GPS beacon – an accumulation of “small negligences” – realised he was lost.
The next day, he created smoke signals from a clearing in the bush, he told the program which airs on Monday evening. Two helicopters overhead initially gave him hope that he had been found, before he realised that the aircraft had water buckets attached and were fighting nearby bushfires.
“I couldn’t wrap my head around it. Surely it doesn’t seem like a safe idea for me to hop in the bucket,” he said.
He said he came so close to the fires that he could hear “crackling sounds” and see trees falling around him.
“I’m just a few metres from the fire and doing everything I can — shouting, waving my shirt, screaming, doing everything so the helicopters can spot me.”
At the time, a massive search and rescue mission was taking shape, eventually comprising of 300 people across 81 State Emergency Service teams, representing 207 volunteer field days.
NSW State Emergency Service bush search and rescue deployed 18 specialist teams, who between them contributed 70 person days in “very dense, very steep” terrain.
When helicopters deployed as part of the search later hovered nearby, Nazari dismissed them, presuming they were also part of fire-fighting efforts.
“After a few days I just totally gave up the idea [that] they’d keep searching for me,” he said.
In the interview – the first time Nazari has spoken publicly since the ordeal – he described how when hungry, thirsty and heat-affected, “all sort of possibilities loomed”.
“That is when you start contemplating basically everything, your life flashes right in front of your eyes,” he said.
Using his digital camera, he decided to create a video message for his family.
“I was, I think, expressing my gratitude and forgiveness, a plea for forgiveness,” he said.
“I was pretty reconciled with the idea of the possibility that now could be the end of everything.”
Nazari was eventually spotted by a group of hikers on 8 January, about 10km from where he had last been seen. He was dehydrated and hungry – he had survived on berries and two muesli bars, which had been left in a hut by another hiker – but had no obvious injuries and was discharged from the nearby Cooma hospital less than 48 hours after being found.
The Hazara former refugee from Mari Abad, Pakistan, arrived in Australia five years ago. Since January, he has signed up to volunteer for the Victorian SES – to give back to the community to which he said he is indebted.
