Fears for Briton lost in Australian rainforest

Military search teams and a helicopter with heat-seeking equipment have been deployed to find a British teenager last seen two days ago walking in a rugged and remote part of Australia.

Louise Saunders, from Kidderminster, Worcestershire, used a mobile phone to call a friend to say she was lost in thickly wooded rainforest at the summit of Mount Tyson, near the town of Tully in the far north of Queensland. But her phone cut out as she was speaking and no one has been able to contact her since.

Ms Saunders, 19, had told a friend she would be back in Tully, about 800 miles north of the state capital, Brisbane, by late afternoon on Tuesday.

Police, who are trying to establish if a pen top and banana skins found on the mountain were left there by Ms Saunders, indicated that the terrain was overgrown and rugged, but said the weather was warm so there was little danger of her suffering exposure.

Officers are particularly concerned by the fact that the teenager is shortsighted and has broken her glasses. She is believed to have made a reference to the ground being slippery when she rang from Mount Tyson though she did not seem desperate. Ms Saunders has taken a year out from a beauty course at Kidderminster College to travel around Australia with her friend, Joanne Woodward. She telephoned Ms Woodward from the mountain and also sent a text message to say that she was lost. The pair were planning to fly together to New Zealand.

Ms Saunders was working as a banana packer in Tully and had planned to move to Sydney on Monday to spend Christmas with friends, including a boyfriend she had met at the packing plant. Her boyfriend has now also joined the search.

Inspector Michael Bailey of the Queensland Police Service said that, because of the terrain, the search tactics had been altered. "We are probably going to call off the land search ... for the safety of the searchers," he said.

But Insp Bailey's colleague, Sergeant Julie Elliot, said police were confident of success: "We're always hopeful that we will find her. The weather is warm. There are a lot of personnel out there. We've got two teams and a helicopter."

Ms Saunders' mother, Elizabeth, has been sending text messages to her daughter's telephone, telling her to hold on and informing her that help is on its way. "The police are quite calm about it all because they are used to it. They told me that backpackers go missing all the time," Mrs Saunders said. "But I am so frightened though because I know she is alone in the dark and she must be scared to death. She is very sensible and quite tough but she will be very frightened.

"She was really looking forward to having Christmas in Sydney but I just want her back. Backpacking is a wonderful experience if they are careful and take great care."