The alarm was raised by a car rental company.
Lovisa Sjoberg, known as Kiki, had rented a gray Mitsubishi Outlander and driven it to Kosciuszko National Park, where she was known for hiking and taking photographs of brumbies.
The 48-year-old photographer and Snowy Mountains resident was last seen driving the car around 7am on Tuesday, October 15. The last time he was known to have spoken to another person was a week earlier, on Tuesday, October 8.
On Monday, October 21, when Sjoberg had missed the deadline to return the car and could not be contacted or located, the rental company contacted the police.
The car was found at Kiandra Courthouse, a former World Heritage-listed courthouse in a former gold mining town in the Kosciuszko National Park.
Over the next six days, a huge search effort – on foot, by vehicle, on horseback, by plane and by helicopter, involving more than half a dozen different agencies, as well as concerned locals – saw people scour the rugged countryside of the Snowy Mountains.
Then, at 4:50 p.m. on Sunday, October 27, a National Parks and Wildlife Service officer found Sjoberg on the Nungar Creek Path in Kiandra.
She had suffered a snakebite, sprained her ankle and was dehydrated but, in the words of Monaro Police District Commander Superintendent Toby Lindsay, she was “very lucky to be alive”. She was taken to the hospital in stable condition.
'Extraordinary character and immense courage'
Sjoberg, from Stockholm in Sweden, moved to Sydney more than 20 years ago to study fine art and work as a photographer, before moving to the Snowy Mountains, a rugged alpine region, about halfway between Sydney and Melbourne, in 2018.
Peter Cochran, a well-known figure in the area, had met Sjoberg several times over their shared passion for protecting brumbies, the wild horses that live in Kosciuszko National Park.
The New South Wales government announced last year that the state would again aerial shoot brumbies in the park to control their growing numbers, something that has caused outrage among some activists, including Cochran and Sjoberg.
“He was passionate about saving horses and recording their beauty,” said Cochran, who runs a horseback riding company.
“She was a very respected person, not only as a photographer, but… her overall passion for horses and the mountains there was almost unequal among the people who defended the brumbies.”
Cochran realized someone was missing in the national park before he knew who it was and before reports of his disappearance became public.
“We saw police vehicles and other activities up there, which at that time had not been made public,” he said. “And when the riders found out, we just wanted to go out and try to help… They all dropped everything and left.”
Cochran was one of nine cyclists from the almacén community who traversed the rugged terrain of the national park in search of Sjoberg. He spent three days riding and searching, staying each night in his horse trailer, in constant contact with the police, informing them where he and his companions were searching.
The conditions, he said, would have been especially harsh for a hiker.
“The level of weeds up there, which is a regrowth after the 2020 fires, is incredible. In some places it is almost impossible to pass on horseback,” he said.
At night, temperatures dropped below freezing, the area experienced some rain during the week she was missing, and spring is a season when copperhead snakes, whose bites can kill a human, are very active in the area.
“The other thing I would face was the fact that I was alone and loneliness will affect everyone… if you are alone in a remote area for an extended period of time,” she said. “And the fact that she was among the dead horses and smelled them and saw them, and that's an incredibly distressing thing to witness.”
“Certainly no one predicted that she would be found safe and sound after such a long period of time. “There were big concerns for her,” he said.
Cochran said Sjoberg demonstrated “extraordinary character and immense courage to stay [alive] there as long as she was.”
Sjöberg's search
When people go missing in remote bush areas, the NSW SES Bush Search and Rescue (BSAR) team is high on the list of groups to call.
Police contacted BSAR, an elite forest rescue unit, to assist almacén SES teams in the search. For six days, they sent 20 team members out to search, often operating in teams of two or three, carrying supplies on their backs and camping overnight for a few days at a time.
The fact that many days had passed between Sjoberg entering the park and the alarm being raised, in addition to the fact that he had left no indication of where he planned to go within the park, dramatically increased the degree of difficulty for searchers.
“It's a huge area,” said Inspector Paul Campbell-Allen, BSAR unit commander. “It really can be the needle in the haystack kind of thing. Because when you look at the area that it could have gone through… we were looking at an area that stretched probably six kilometers wide by maybe 15 to 20 kilometers long. So that's just a very big area to look at.”
Campbell-Allen says that for this search operation, police started by looking at all the tracks a hiker might have passed by, checking any cabins or campsites, and talking to other hikers in the area.
“Then they were analyzing where all the brumbies' movements were, and where the herds were moving, because that was a possible target for her,” she said.
When that gave no results and the search had to expand further into the forest, into areas that were more difficult to access by vehicle, Campbell-Allen's team was sent for a “rapid reconnaissance.” “That might be going down the walkways pretty quickly to see if anyone is there. “That way you can cover a lot of ground.”
“At that stage of the search, you start to think we may not find her alive,” he said.
“What was not known is what equipment he had, if he had food or water. “There's running water up there, so if she was in a creek line, then she'll be able to get water, that's probably the most important thing… but the injuries become a really big issue… She was very lucky to have survived.”
At 5pm on Sunday, Campbell-Allen received the call from the police she had been waiting for.
“[They said] “That she was found by national park agents on the road and that she was alive, which is very good news.”
Cochran was at home Sunday, packing to leave again for another day of searching, when he received a text message from police informing him that Sjoberg had been found.
“To say I was on the verge of tears is not far off. “It was a great emotional relief.”
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