Greg Harris
Road trips are meant to be about playlists, snack stops, and scenic detours.
Sure, you may expect some delays, traffic, maybe even a wrong turn… but you definitely don’t expect the loo to become the main event of your journey.
But one woman recently found herself in a situation that turns even the most bizarre travel horror stories up a notch: she ended up trapped inside an outdoor toilet and couldn’t get out.
The major accident happened while a woman was on a trip in the Australian outback and she ended up getting stuck in a waist-deep pit latrine after it collapsed.
Advert
And this wasn’t just a quick accident. She was ‘trapped in the sewage pit for approximately three hours’, the BBC reports.
The unfortunate traveler remained there, ‘until [she was] rescued by a local tradesman who happened to be passing by’, authorities in the Northern Territory said.
Who knows what would have happened if he didn’t come along!
The woman was on the way home to Canberra after visiting relatives in Darwin when she found herself stuck in the loo.
She wasn’t travelling alone - according to reports, she was with her husband and two children, according to the Action for Alice community Facebook page.
An eyewitness told local outlet NT News that the woman’s husband was eventually able to flag down a tradesman, who came up with a makeshift rescue plan. A rope was lowered into the pit for the woman to hold onto, before the man used his car to carefully help haul her back up to safety.
According to the unnamed witness, the ordeal dragged on for more than 45 minutes — with conditions described as truly grim, including ‘literal nappies,’ as well as human waste in the hole.
Despite the shocking experience, reports say the woman was taken to hospital as a precaution but did not suffer any serious injuries.
The pit toilet at the centre of the accident is located at the Henbury Meteorites Conservation Zoo, around 145km (90 miles) south-west of the remote town of Alice Springs.
Pit toilets are latrines that don’t flush but collect human waste in a deep hole in the ground.
They are common in rural areas and people travelling off-grid, such as camping sites, may come across them.
A workplace health and safety regulator is now investigating how the incident occured.
NT WorkSafe said the agency managing the Henbury conservation zone had notified it of the incident.