Missing
Out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of some movement in the riverbed. At first glance I thought it was a tree moving in the wind. “Come around again,” I said to the pilot. “I think I’ve got something here!”
As we came around, there, huddled up on a small beach under some trees on the edge of the river, was our missing party. What a relief! After another orbit we came in up the river as low as we could and got in as close as possible to them. There they were, three kids and an adult.
With a variety of hand signals exchanged over the noise of the downwash it eventually became clear to them that we were dropping a search party downstream to walk up to them. We also dropped an emergency pack containing food and some warm gear to tide them over until the cavalry got there. A short hop downstream to a suitable clearing and the search party we had onboard were off, reaching the bedraggled group about half an hour later.
The kids were in a pretty bad way and the adult wasn’t too flash either. With the aid of some ropes they were manoeuvered onto the side of the river where they had wanted to be for the last 18 hours or so, and then they walked down to where the chopper was now waiting.
They’d done pretty much everything right but things go wrong in the bush sometimes. They ended up being lucky, however, as another night out there would likely have finished one or more of the children.