Josh Dart (right) with Hadi Nazari and fellow hikers in the moments after he was found. Photo: Josh Dart.
It was midafternoon on Wednesday 8 January and Central Coast teacher Josh Dart was on the first day of a three-day hike with friends in the Kosciuszko National Park.
The group was heading up towards Carruthers Peak from the popular Blue Lake circuit when they stopped to regroup and enjoy the view.
“My mate James was the first one there and while he was looking around, he heard someone calling out really faintly,” Josh said.
“He looks down and there’s a little dot on the ridge below and they kept calling, shouting at each other, going, ‘Do you need help?’ and it sounded like he was saying ‘I need help’.
“Gradually we got closer and closer to each other. We came down the hill a bit and he came up, and then we just had this moment of realising it was him!”
The lone figure on the ridge was 23-year-old bushwalker Hadi Nazari who was reported missing on Boxing Day in dense bushland in the remote Geehi area, 10 km as the crow flies from Blue Lake.
Jessie Dart was first to recognise missing hiker Hadi Nazari after her companions heard his calls for help. Photo: Josh Dart.
Josh’s cousin Jessie Dart had seen photos of the missing medical student posted in Jindabyne before they set out on their walk and she was the first to recognise him.
“We asked him his name too and she was like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s him!’ It was really emotional actually; we started crying, he started crying and we just sat with him,” Josh said.
“I called triple zero and then the police came and got him in a chopper, and in the meantime, he called his family on another phone, and just hearing him chat to his family, it was just beautiful, he was just in tears.”
As the small group gathered around the exhausted young hiker, other bushwalkers joined them and he was offered food and water.
“On the phone to triple zero they said don’t give him too much food because it could make him sick,” Josh said.
“We got chatting and he was actually in good spirits. I said to him, ‘Hey you missed New Year’s Eve’, and he goes, ‘I don’t care for New Year’s Eve so I’m not really too bummed about that, it’s not my thing. I’d rather miss new year anyway’. So he was able to joke a bit.”
Josh said that apart from a few scratches and sunburn he had no obvious injuries and chatted and laughed with the group, posing for selfies and thanking God that his ordeal was over.
“When we first saw him, we were thinking, this is just too good to be true if we found him,” said Josh with a laugh.
“He was just saying, ‘Praise God’ and the timing of it in such a remote area, to have someone looking at the right time was just amazing.”
An aerial perspective of the moment authorities arrived to collect the missing student as he sat with the hikers who found him. Photo: Josh Dart.
Josh’s call to triple zero brought the extensive multiagency search to the best possible conclusion and Hadi was airlifted from Blue Lake and reunited with friends and family at the Geehi campground.
He remains under observation in Cooma Hospital while Josh and his friends continue on with their walk in high spirits.
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