Woman stuck upside down for 7 hours in rock crevice after dropping phone

A woman’s adventurous spirit took a perilous turn in Australia’s Hunter Valley region on October 12 when a routine photo opportunity escalated into a dramatic rescue. The 23-year-old, identified as Matilda Campbell, found herself wedged upside down in a narrow crevice between two boulders after dropping her phone while taking pictures.
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The New South Wales Ambulance service detailed her unusual predicament in an Instagram post on Monday, describing how she was literally “between a rock and a hard place.”
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The challenging operation took a total of seven hours to free her from the roughly three-metre (10-foot) crevice.
In a light-hearted Facebook post following the incident, Campbell shared a photo taken during her rescue, which showed her soles wedged between the boulders. Accompanying the image, she cheekily remarked, “Not my feet on display like that,” along with a laughing emoji. In another post, she humourously reflected on her accident-prone nature, stating, “No more rock exploration for me for a while.”

Peter Watts, the specialist rescue paramedic involved, expressed that he had never encountered a job quite like this in his decade-long career. He remarked on the rewarding yet challenging nature of the rescue operation. Friends of Campbell had to trek to a location with better phone reception to alert emergency responders after their attempts to free her had failed, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported.
Watts praised the multidisciplinary team for their collaborative effort, stating, “We all worked incredibly well together to achieve a good outcome for the patient.” Rescuers constructed a hardwood frame to ensure stability during the operation and carefully removed several heavy boulders to create a safe access point.
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Once rescuers gained access to her feet, they faced the tricky task of guiding her through a tight “S” bend, which took more than an hour. A specialized winch was needed to shift a massive boulder weighing 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds) out of the way.
Despite her precarious position, Campbell remained calm and cooperative throughout the ordeal. “Anything we asked her to do, she was able to do to help us get her out,” Watts noted.
The good news is that she was freed with only minor scratches and bruises, although her phone was sadly left behind in the crevice.