Rain has hindered Aboriginal trackers and police searching for a gunman who terrorised a British woman and is feared to have shot dead her boyfriend, officials said today.
The manhunt, which has blocked all major roads in the vast Northern Territory, stretched into the neighbouring outback states Western Australia and Queensland today.
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The gunman hailed down Briton Peter Falconio and his 27-year-old girlfriend Joanne Lees on the Stuart Highway on Saturday night, claiming there was something wrong with their Volkswagen van.
Mr Falconio has not been seen since he went to look at the back of the van. Ms Lees told police she may have heard a gunshot before she was forced at gunpoint from the van by the man.
Ms Lees was gagged, and her wrists and legs bound, but she managed to escape into bushland where police said she hid for hours, hunted for some time by the man and his dog.
Police are pinning their hopes on someone recognising the gunman from a computer picture drawn up from Ms Lees.
Over 100 police, some in helicopters and on motorbikes, have joined the search of sparsely populated outback desert.
Bush survival specialist Mr Ron ‘Desert Fox’ O'Sullivan said the gunman could survive in the outback undetected for months.
"He's got bushcraft of some sort if he hasn't been found yet with all those people, all those aircraft looking for him," said Mr O'Sullivan, who has trained Australian soldiers in desert skills.