LAND DOWN UNDER

Family Saved After 10 Days in Outback

Rescuer said they were “pretty happy.”

A man and his young sons who got lost in the Australian outback have been rescued after spending 10 days without food or water. Steven Van Lonkhuyzen, 37, and his sons, Ethan and Timothy, ages 7 and 5, were trapped in the Queensland outback’s rough terrain in Expedition National Park. As part of a saga that’s surely in contention for the most Australian story ever, local cattleman Tom Wagner hopped on his quad bike and began searching the park when he heard the family had disappeared on their way from Brisbane to Cairns. “I talked to a national park fella, so I worked out where I thought they would be and worked out how much fuel they had,” said Wagner, who estimated where the family could have become stuck in a bog. “I came around the corner there and saw them near the creek where they were bogged. They were chucking their hands up in the air, they were pretty happy,” Wagner said.