Unable to walk after a car accident, a teenage girl spent six cold nights in the open in bushland west of Canberra.
Kathleen Bautista, 19, was last seen driving in Canberra on Saturday and her disappearance prompted an extensive search.
ACT Police Detective John Giles said she was found on Friday morning, after surviving on creek water, but no food during a week in the open when temperatures dipped close to zero.
Detective John Giles said she was in hospital in a stable condition with non-life threatening leg and abdominal injuries.
Her father, Ronnie Bautista, said he was ecstatic and over the moon that she had been found safe and sound.
"I got the phone call from John while I was in the car. That's probably the loudest scream that I made when I heard the news that Kat was with him," he told reporters.
With the search set to extend into a second week, ACT Policing provided intelligence about signals from Ms Bautista's phone, directing searchers to the Cotter area about 15 kilometres west of parliament house.
Constable Lachlan Ryan said under an hour into the search, an SES crew found Ms Bautista's car crashed down a tall embankment into a creek.
She wasn't with the vehicle, but just as a fresh search was being planned, a policeman noticed a waving hand on a ridge on the other side of the gulley.
"She'd probably managed to get several hundred metres from the car," he said.
Constable Ryan said she was dehydrated, injured from the accident and starting to suffer from exposure, but lucid.
"I had a clear conversation with her. She was chatty and even started telling jokes. She was relieved and she thanked us profusely. She was actually, despite her circumstances, in very good spirits."
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