A woman on a family road trip in the Australian outback found herself trapped waist-deep in human waste for three hours after a pit latrine collapsed beneath her.
The incident occurred at the Henbury Meteorites Conservation Zone, about 145 km southwest of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. The woman, traveling with her husband and two children from Darwin to Canberra, had stopped to use the basic long-drop toilet when the structure gave way.
According to local authorities, she was rescued by a passing tradesman after her husband flagged him down. The rescuer lowered a rope into the sewage pit and used his car to pull her out—a process that took over 45 minutes.
An eyewitness told NT News that the pit contained "literal nappies," excrement, and urine. The woman was taken to hospital but reportedly did not suffer serious injuries.
NT WorkSafe, the territory's workplace safety regulator, said it has been notified and an investigation is ongoing.
This is not the first such accident in Australia. In July 2024, a man in Victoria was freed by firefighters after getting stuck in a pit toilet. In 2012, a 65-year-old woman in Queensland fractured her leg when she fell backward into one.
Pit latrines have also proven deadly elsewhere. In South Africa, a five-year-old student died in 2014 after a latrine collapsed, and in 2018, authorities pledged to eliminate them from schools following a second child's death.