Stranded 12 hours in a flooded outback, father and son saved by a billionaire’s helicopter

A Melbourne father and son who set out to see Lake Eyre fill with water ended up spending 12 hours stranded in one of Australia’s most remote corners, before a billionaire flying his own helicopter found them.

Bill Kosky and his son, both from Middle Park in Melbourne, were driving their Toyota along Halligan Bay Road in South Australia’s far north when a sudden, powerful storm turned the unsealed dirt track into deep mud and clay. Their four-wheel-drive got completely stuck, far from help and with almost no phone reception.

The pair managed to send short emergency messages before their signal disappeared entirely, and were then forced to spend the night alone in the dark, flooded desert with no way of knowing when help might come.

Their rescue came from an unlikely direction. Tim Roberts, a Perth-based billionaire and experienced pilot, had landed his private helicopter at the William Creek Hotel on the Oodnadatta Track and was planning to stay the night. At the pub, he learned that emergency services were searching for two travellers who had not returned from a trip toward Lake Eyre.

Roberts put his own plans aside, teamed up with local outback resident Trevor Wright, and flew his helicopter over the flooded landscape to search for the missing pair. Spotting the mud-bound Toyota from the air was not easy given the scale of the flooding, but the two men eventually found the vehicle and landed nearby.

“I thought you were in the army or something,” Kosky told Roberts as the pilot stepped out of the helicopter. Wright said emergency workers and locals have rescued 28 people from the region over a six-week period, as unusually wet conditions turn a bucket-list sightseeing trip into a genuine hazard for unprepared visitors.

[Image credit: Wikimedia Commons]