Oh, wine ― is there anything you can’t do?
An Australian woman stranded for five days in thick bushland managed to survive the ordeal with some sweets and a single bottle of wine ― even though she normally doesn’t drink.
On April 30, Lillian Ip decided to visit her mother in the state of Victoria.
She was traveling through dense bush when she took a wrong turn and hit a dead end. Her vehicle became stuck in the mud, according to 9 News Australia, which reported on the incident this weekend.
Even worse, the accident happened when Ip was more than 37 miles away from the nearest town ― and she wasn’t getting any service on her phone.
“Due to health issues she was unable to try and walk for help so [she] stayed with her car,” Wodonga Police Station Sgt. Martin Torpey told 9 News Australia.
It turned into a five-day wait in the bushland for Ip, with only a juice box, a bottle of wine and some candy as sustenance.
“I thought I was going to die there. My whole body shut down on Friday,” she told 9 News Australia.
Things were so bad by the fourth day that Ip wrote a letter to her family telling them she loved them and not to cry for her.
The next day, help came when Ip heard the sound of a search helicopter.
“I’m just sitting there thinking, what am I going to do, how am I going to survive this?” she said. “I was about to give up.”
Torpey told the BBC that Ip did everything correctly.
“She used great common sense to stay with her car and not wander off into bushland, which assisted in police being able to find her,” he said.
But that doesn’t mean she didn’t have her priorities upon being rescued.
“First thing that came to mind was water and a cigarette,” Ip told 9 News, laughing.
And how did that bottle of wine taste, you ask? Ip’s single-word, bleeped-for-TV response suggests she was not a fan.
Ip was taken to a local hospital for observation and is being treated for dehydration.