On May 4th, Australian police in the state of Victoria discovered the car of a woman who’d gone missing in the Mitta Mitta brush five days earlier. Lillian, as the press release identified her, mistakenly drove down a dead-end road and when attempting to turn her car around, got stuck in the mud. Unable to walk and find help, the 48-year-old remained in her car for five days before a helicopter spotted her How did she survive? Booze and candy, baby!
“She was only planning a short-day trip so had only taken a couple of snacks and lollies with her but no water,” Wodonga Police Station Sergeant Martin Torpey said in the press statement. I can only assume a young man named Jesus Christ was with Lillian because while there was no water there was, stay with me here, wine. A miracle! “The only liquid Lillian, who doesn’t drink, had with her was a bottle of wine she had bought as a gift for her mother so that got her through,” Sergeant Torpey confirmed.
I sincerely hope it was a screw top, otherwise, I can only imagine the energy expended trying to open the bottle. I also hope the wine provided some help dozing off in between panic attacks and that the lollipops placated the anxiety of being stranded in the wilderness.
I have to admit that hearing she was able to survive off of these sugared items in their various forms would have been very dangerous for me to learn during my college years when this was pretty much my exact diet. Who knows what sort of damage I would have done had I known that this combo was sustainable? I was already really pushing my limits.
Obviously, very different circumstances of isolation but Lillian’s story also reminds me of the woman in Spain who spent 500 days in a cave. While in there, she spent her time weaving, drawing, reading books, and exercising. The extended cave excursion was for research (and breaking the world record.) I have to imagine the research was something like, “how nice of a life can you live with no one fucking bothering you? pretty damn nice.”
I’m glad Lillian was found safe and healthy and is in good care now. And it seems like both of these women found enviable ways to pass their time with no one else around them.