A 60-YEAR-OLD South Australian man has been found guilty of attacking two young foreign backpackers on a remote South Australian beach.

The man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was on trial for sexually assaulting a Brazilian woman and hitting a German woman with a hammer at Salt Creek, east of Adelaide, in February 2016.

It took a South Australian Supreme Court jury 12 hours to find the 60-year-old guilty of six charges, including indecent assault, aggravated kidnapping and endangering life, however he was found not guilty of attempted murder.

The man met the backpackers through classifieds website Gumtree, where they advertised for a ride from Adelaide to Melbourne.

He picked them up from a train station and drove them to the remote spot in SA’s Coorong National Park where he attacked them.

The man was found to have hit the German woman over the head with a hammer several times, inflicting four deep lacerations on her scalp that left her drenched in blood.

She fought back and broke free but she was then repeatedly rammed by the man in his 4WD as she fled across the sand.

Moments earlier the man dragged the Brazilian woman to the ground, tied her up with rope, cut off her bikini and sexually assaulted her, the jury found.

The women, both 24, managed to escape the attack and the man was arrested in his car on the beach.

Prosecutor Jim Pearce QC said the case against the man was overwhelming, and the two backpackers were honest and brave young women.

“There is no mystery here about what happened. There is no mystery because the two women told you,” Mr Pearce said in his closing submissions.

“You saw two very impressive young women who sat in the witness box and did their best to describe to you a very harrowing ordeal.”

Defence counsel Bill Boucaut, SC, countered the incident did not occur at all.

He argued the Brazilian woman ran naked into the dunes following an argument and the German woman was injured when she fell from the vehicle’s roof while they searched for her.

The jury disagreed.

The man was remanded in custody for sentencing submissions at a later date.