An innocuous toilet break in the Australian Outback turned into a harrowing three-hour ordeal for a tourist after she ended up waist-deep in human waste following a pit toilet collapse. The woman was visiting the Henbury meteorite crater about 120km south of Alice Springs with her partner and two children from Canberra when she entered the toilet around Sunday (Apr 19) afternoon.
Authorities in the Northern Territory said the woman was rescued by a local tradesman who happened to be passing by. The woman’s husband managed to get the attention of the tradesman, who lowered a rope into the pit for the woman to hang on to, then used his car to lift her out, according to a report in The Guardian.
The entire rescue operation took more than 45 minutes, and the woman was taken to a hospital 144 km away. Fortunately, she did not suffer any serious injuries, only sustaining minor cuts.
The long-drop toilets or pit toilets are basic, non-flush latrines that simply collect human excrement in a deep hole dug in the ground. They are usually found in remote or rural areas, such as off-grid camping sites.
The Action for Alice community Facebook page posted photos of the aftermath of the toilet nightmare, saying: “This won’t feature in tourism brochures”.
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NT WorkSafe is investigating the incident and stated that the agency managing the Henbury conservation zone notified them of the woman’s plight.
“NT WorkSafe has been notified of an incident where a tourist fell into a sewage pit at the Henbury Meteorites Conservation Zone,” the agency said in a statement.
“The notification was made by the agency with management of the conservation zone, as a collapse or partial collapse of a structure, which is a dangerous incident under the work health and safety laws.”
The toilet has since been cordoned off, and the probe is underway.