Kathleen Bautista, 19, was suffering from dehydration and exposure when she was found by searchers near the Cotter reserve west of Canberra

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

A 19-year-old woman spent six cold nights in the open in bushland west of Canberra after she suffered leg and abdominal injuries when her car plunged down an embankment.

Kathleen Bautista was last seen driving in Canberra on Saturday and her disappearance prompted an extensive search.

ACT police detective John Giles said she was found on Friday morning after surviving on creek water but no food during a week in the open when temperatures dipped close to zero.

She was in hospital on Friday in a stable condition.

Her father, Ronnie Bautista, said he was ecstatic that she had been found safe and sound.

“I got the phone call from [police] while I was in the car. That’s probably the loudest scream that I made when I heard the news,” he told reporters.

With the search set to extend into a second week, ACT police used signals from Bautista’s phone, directing searchers to the Cotter area about 15km west of Parliament House.

Constable Lachlan Ryan said that after less than an hour into the search, an SES crew found her car down a steep embankment.

She was not with the vehicle, but just as a fresh search was being planned, a policeman noticed a waving hand on a ridge on the other side of the gully.

“She’d probably managed to get several hundred metres from the car,” he said.

Constable Ryan said she was dehydrated, injured from the accident and starting to suffer from exposure, but lucid.

“I had a clear conversation with her. She was chatty and even started telling jokes. She was relieved and she thanked us profusely. She was actually, despite her circumstances, in very good spirits.”