A young couple are relieved to be alive after their camper trailer was stolen while they slept inside.
After a long day of driving, Brock Momcilovic, his girlfriend Jedha Kinder and their two dogs were camping overnight in their trailer attached to a four-wheel vehicle at the Cumberland River rest stop on the Great Ocean Road.
Ms Kinder was jolted awake to the sound of the car engine starting just before midnight.
She jumped off the bed into the annex area between the trailer and the car, while Mr Momcilovic was thrown backwards from the momentum.
Ms Kinder and the two dogs were dragged 200 metres up the road before falling out on to the road where she suffered bruising and gravel rash, as the dogs fled in the chaos.
The carjacker then drove for 8km down the road, as Mr Momcilovic held on for dear life.
“I sort of just laid there because I thought it was a dream,” Mr Momcilovic told ABC Radio Melbourne.
But quickly reality kicked in during the incident as Mr Momcilovic realised he had his phone handy.
“I rang triple-0 while I was holding on,” he said.
“I was actually on Google Maps while on the phone to the operator telling her where we were heading.”
As Mr Momcilovic continued to hold on, he didn’t know if his girlfriend or their dogs were okay, and he had no way of checking.
“I was worried if I fell off, I was going to be pretty well done,” he said.
The car eventually slowed down enough for Mr Momcilovic to jump off the vehicle, before the car was abandoned near a nearby police station after the clutch blew out, with the carjacker taking off on foot with the keys in hand.
The couple’s dogs were found a day apart, one was found at the campsite, the other near a cliff, and have since been reunited.
The couple have urged campers not to leave their keys in the car, with Mr Momcilovic saying, “It could have been a lot worse.”
Image credits: Nine News
