New pictures have emerged of the mammoth rescue effort required to free a young bushwalker who spent seven hours wedged upside-down between boulders in the NSW Hunter Valley.
Matilda Campbell, 23, was bushwalking with friends when she leant down to retrieve her mobile phone that had fallen into a 3m-deep crevice on a Laguna property, west of Cessnock, on October 12.
WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Woman wedged between boulders for seven hours freed
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Instead, she fell head-first in after it.
Her friends tried in vain to free her before hiking out to find phone reception to call triple-0 for help.
By this stage, she had been stuck for more than an hour.
A “multi-disciplinary team” of local rescue crews, NSW Police and NSW Ambulance paramedics were called in and worked to keep her calm as they removed several boulders using a specialist winch, before facing the tricky task of “navigating” her out.
“In my 10 years as a rescue paramedic, I had never encountered a job quite like this,” specialist rescue paramedic Peter Watts said.
“That gap that we could see her in was only 10cm wide … the last (rock) we moved was a large slab that was probably about 500kg.”
Cessnock District Rescue Squad Vicki West said Campbell was understandably “scared”.
“We lowered some water down to her because she was thirsty but she kept losing the water because it was just such an awkward position,” she said.
After removing the boulders and “with both feet now accessible”, the team faced the challenge of navigating her out “through a tight S-bend”. That process alone also took an hour.
While Campbell was dizzy and had no feeling in her legs she had only suffered cuts and grazes.
“Her head was a little swollen … which you would expect from being upside down for seven hours,” Watts added.
In total, she had spent seven hours hanging upside-down before she was freed — but still without her phone, which could not be retrieved.
Campbell later said she’ll take a break from bushwalking for now – but thanked her friends and rescuers who saved her life.
“It’s safe to say I’m the most accident-prone person ever. I am okay … no more rock exploration for me for a while,” she wrote online.
“I’m doing good now everything is nearly healed.”
– with reporting by Natasha Squarey