A British man who ran into dense Australian bushland after suffering a medical episode remains missing despite a huge search involving a helicopter, boats, and mounted police.
Aslan King, 25, has been missing since the early hours of Saturday morning after suffering what friends have described as possibly a form of seizure during a coastal camping trip in Victoria.
King, an illustrator from Bristol who is believed to have related to Australia just two week ago, reportedly hit his head on the ground before standing suddenly and running into the wilderness surrounding the campsite where he had been staying with four friends.
The site is near the town of Princeton, beside cliffs on the Victorian coast near the tourist site known as the Twelve Apostles, a series of rocky outcrops rising out of the ocean some 100 miles south-west of Melbourne.
Victoria Police said officers were searching for King on Sunday using a helicopter, horses, motorcycles and sniffer dogs.
Local media also showed water-borne police officers checking along the coastline in rubber dinghies.
Police told reporters at the scene that they were concentrating on a radius of 300 metres around the campsite, but said the search had been made difficult by the wild terrain which includes thick vegetation, rocky clifftops, and deep coastal waters.
The area is also known to be home to a significant number of deadly tiger snakes.
Sergeant Danny Brown of Victoria Police said thermal imaging sensors used on Saturday and Sunday had detected no trace of King, but that they might be used again as search parties continued into the night.
“You’re using every sense, whether that be eyes, ears and touch as well,” he told Nine newspapers, adding the heat sensors would make “a massive difference, because we’re going to find things in areas that the eye can’t see”.
“Some of this scrub, you have to get on hands and knees to move through it,” he said.
Brown said King’s friends and family had described his disappearance as “completely out of character”.
The Foreign Office said in a statement: “Our staff are seeking further information following the disappearance of a British man near Princeton, Australia and are in contact with the Australian police.”