00:00We were walking up from the Blue Lake and we came to this point where there's this beautiful
00:06view to the right and my friend James, he was a much quicker hiker than me, he's very
00:12fast, very speedy.
00:14He actually was the first there and he went out to look at the view and he was standing
00:18on the rock and he looked down and he could see, well firstly he heard someone like shouting
00:25out, yelling and then he looked down and could see a speck of a person but very small
00:32and so then we started yelling and shouting and saying, are you alright, are you injured?
00:39And yeah, so me and Jess, we had caught up to him by then and we started to, yeah, both
00:45getting closer and closer to him, trying to shout out and get his attention.
00:49The closer we got we could tell that he was actually asking for help and so we kind of
00:54scrambled down the side of the valley and as we got closer, that morning I'd actually
01:01seen a poster of him in the National Park Office while we were buying the tickets and
01:05I recognised his scarf because he was wearing it in the photo.
01:09And then when we were close enough to hear each other I was like, what's your name?
01:14And then he shouted out that his name was Hardy and I was like, oh my gosh, I think
01:17this is the guy that has been missing and then we asked him, how long have you been
01:21out here?
01:22And he said, eight days and then when we finally got closer I said, you went missing on Boxing
01:29Day, right?
01:30And he's like, yeah, I've been out here for eight days, all I've eaten is two muesli
01:34bars.
01:35I showed him the calendar on my phone, I was like, it's the 8th of January, you've been
01:38out here for 13 days and we both burst into tears and hugged each other and yeah, it was
01:45a really special moment.
01:46As this was all unfolding, we had other hikers around us that could see what was happening
01:51and they started coming down and surrounding him as well.
01:54So it was kind of this big group of us all coming around and there was people offering
01:58water, people offering muesli bars, chocolates, etc.
02:03All these different things.
02:06And then he was just so thankful, he was just like, praise God and then when he saw the
02:12helicopter come over, he got all excited, he stood up and he went to shake all our hands
02:17and he was thanking all of us for finding him and then we just helped him up the hill
02:24up to the helicopter.
02:25I think the best moment was actually in that time as well, we gave him a phone to call
02:30his family and when his mum answered the phone and heard his voice, you could just hear,
02:35the phone wasn't even on speaker, but you could hear it sounding out through the speakers
02:39of the phone.
02:40We could just hear the emotion and I was getting teary and just hearing him talk to his family
02:45for the first time.
02:46It was a special moment to be a part of and we just happened to be in the right place
02:51in the right time.
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