An Australian hiker has described how he was forced to “carry my leg” and crawl through scrubland for two days after falling six metres (20 feet) down a waterfall.
Neil Parker, 54, said he was walking alone on Mount Nebo, 32 km (20 miles) west of Brisbane, the state capital of Queensland, when he fell, breaking his wrist and leg.
“Straight away, I thought, ‘I’m now in a lot of trouble, because no-one knows where I am’,” Parker told reporters from his hospital bed.
“I slid about 20 feet, cartwheeled and slammed into the rock and then landed in the creek on the bottom.”
Parker, an experienced hiker, said he tried to phone for help, but his mobile had been damaged in the fall.
He decided to crawl about three km (two miles) to an area where he believed search and rescue workers would better be able to spot him, Reuters reports.
Parker said painkillers and protein bars he had packed for his hike had helped him survive the painful and painstaking journey.
“I had to carry my leg - and legs are very heavy when they’re not connected to anything - and [I was] trying to pick it up and get over rock and then use this elbow and this arm and just constantly struggling,” he said.
“I could only get a metre or a metre-and-a-half each time before I had to stop.
“What took me 40 minutes to walk up took me nearly two days to crawl back down.”
Parker was eventually spotted by a rescue helicopter and winched out on Tuesday afternoon.