Jamie Neale survived by eating seeds and wild plants after becoming lost in Blue Mountains

A British backpacker has been found alive 12 days after going missing in the Australian bush, having apparently survived by eating seeds and wild plants.

Jamie Neale, 19, from Muswell Hill, north London, disappeared on 3 July when he left his hostel in the town of Katoomba, New South Wales, and went for a walk in the Blue Mountains.

He was found by two walkers about nine miles from where he disappeared. His father, Richard Cass, said Neale had eaten seeds and grass to stay alive. At night he slept by huddling up in his jacket and on one night sheltered under a log. Neale was taken to Katoomba’s Blue Mountains hospital suffering from exhaustion and dehydration.

“He did think he was going to die, he was that scared,” Cass said at a press conference after visiting his son. “He has come back from the dead.”

Cass flew to Australia to join the search but had given up hope that Neale would be found alive. He was told the news while preparing to leave Sydney on a flight today and after holding a “little closure ceremony” and lighting a candle in the park to say goodbye.

He said his son was “gaunt and scrawny” and had been losing hope he would be rescued as search helicopters failed to spot him waving at them. “He’s still a bit depressed, a bit dazed about what happened to him. He said he was losing faith in the idea there was a God every time the helicopter flew over and he was waving and shouting and nothing happened. He thought he was going to die.”

Cass said he had thought his son had “probably fallen off a cliff” and he would get a talking-to about the trouble he had caused.

“When I’ve seen the mistake after mistake he’s made – I can’t say I’d kill him because it would just spoil the point of him being back. [But] I’m going to kick his arse ‑ the millions that have been spent on this search, the man hours and woman hours that have gone into it … all because he goes out on a walk without his mobile phone. The only teenager in the world who goes on a 10-mile hike and leaves his mobile phone behind.”

Officials said Neale was found near the Narrow Neck fire trail. Narrow Neck, south-west of Katoomba, is around 1,000m above sea level and surrounded by forested hills. Night temperatures in the area over recent days have been close to or below freezing.

Cass said his son survived by foraging in the bush. “He was eating seeds. He ate some sort of weed which was like rocket, as he described, a kind of lettuce,” he said. “What he was saying was he would go up on a height and see where the cliffs were and where he had to go, but as soon as he went down he couldn’t see where he was.”

A hospital spokeswoman said Neale was in a stable condition.

Neale went to Australia on 22 June as the first stop on a trip that was due to include Laos, Vietnam and Nepal. He was due back in the UK in September before starting a government and politics degree at Exeter University in October.

He checked into a youth hostel in Katoomba on Thursday 2 July and was last seen about 9.40am the next day.

A check of his room at the hostel revealed he had not taken any of his belongings with him including his mobile phone and personal papers. He booked and paid for a tour of some nearby caves for the Saturday but never turned up. His bank and email accounts had not been touched since his disappearance.

A wide-ranging air and ground search carried out by police, fire, mountain rescue and the park service failed to find Neale, despite the use of dogs.

New South Wales police said in a statement: “About 11.30am today, two bushwalkers alerted emergency services to advise they had come across a man who identified himself as Jamie Neale near the Narrow Neck fire trail, near Katoomba. Police rescue officers, using a rural fire service vehicle, made their way to the location and confirmed the identity of the man.”

Police inspector Carl Clark described the terrain as “extremely rough”, saying dozens of searchers advanced no more than a mile or so on some days. “We always hoped it might be one of those miracle scenarios,” Clark told Sky News.

Two officers spoke to Neale briefly as they were taking him to the hospital.

“At this stage we have no evidence other than what we believe to have have happened, which is that he was genuinely lost,” police spokeswoman Joanne Elliott, said. “Once he is well enough police will be seeking to obtain a formal statement from him simply to clarify the circumstances.”

The Sydney Morning Herald quoted local radio as saying one of the bush walkers gave Neale first aid.

Neale’s mother, Jean Neale, told Sky News: “I never gave up hoping, I always knew he’d be coming home. He’s determined and if he sets his mind to something, he will do it.

“I told all the family and his friends that he was coming home and I had no doubts about that. That kept them strong and in turn that kept me strong.”

Her son had been tearful and exhausted when they spoke on the phone, she said. “I spoke to him in hospital and he said he didn’t think he’d ever see me again and he just wanted to hear my voice. I told him, ‘you don’t get rid of me that easily’.”

She said that as far as she knew he had simply become lost. The trip was the first time that he had been travelling, his mother said, after working as a lab technician to save for the journey.

Mrs Neale spoke to her son in hospital bed. “He said to me ‘All I wanted to do was hear your voice’,” she said. “He said that thinking of me helped him get through this ordeal.”

In 2006 an Australian teenager, David Iredale, died in another part of the Blue Mountains park near Mount Solitary after becoming separated from his friends during a bush walk.