I’ll give my brother Sam a good thump

Rebecca Woodhead, Outback Boy’s sister, talks to Joshi Herrmann
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27 February 2013

The grumpy Aussie ranchers wondering how on earth 18-year-old Brit Sam Woodhead survived in the Queensland Outback for three nights earlier this month clearly haven’t tried to get a lift in his sister’s Mini — and had to wait several minutes as she tries to clear a space amid the tennis rackets, hockey sticks and other sporting paraphernalia. “We’re all quite athletic,” admits Rebecca Woodhead, 21, when we meet at her family’s beautiful Richmond home, which backs on to the Royal Park.

The story of Sam’s disappearance in the Outback, after he got lost on a training run from the ranch where he was working, possessed an unusual combination of tragedy and phwoar.

First there were the pictures of Sam, posing topless in his wetsuit, surfboard under arm. Then Rebecca cropped up on morning TV, looking like the blonde-model-from-Prince-Harry-girlfriend-casting that she is, appealing in cut-glass Brighton College tones for help in finding her brother. Predictably, the story got top billing.

Her rugby player ex-boyfriend, whom she won’t name, and his Scotland team-mates tweeted it, as did her good friend Joe Launchbury, the young England lock, and Sam Branson, whose bride-to-be Isabella Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe Rebecca knows through her sister.

Back when she was only well known among the well-heeled circles of Edinburgh University and through a few modelling shoots for posh brands like Off Your Face, Rebecca was woken at 5am on Wednesday two weeks ago by her mother. “Two policemen have just turned up at the door and said that Sam’s missing,” she heard down the line.

“The search guys say they’ve found people dead after a day, so there was a massive sense of urgency,” says Rebecca. “I didn’t sleep for the next 72 hours.”

The next day — Rebecca’s now ruined 21st birthday — the head of the investigation rang to say that he had called off the search. The family chartered their own helicopter to keep the hunt going.

“I got a phone call on Friday at about five o’clock in the morning, just saying ‘He’s been found’,” Rebecca recalls. A journalist called minutes later to confirm the good news.

When we meet, all the maturity and big-sister assuredness that so impressed during her TV appearances is on show. She’s a public school party girl — when Sam was found, “I just wanted to go out and get drunk” — but without a trace of ditziness.

Sam’s story has gone straight into Outback folklore, with some locals claiming that it “doesn’t add up”. But clearly toughness, strength and fitness are all in the family.

Rebecca played county lacrosse, she and Sam (“the golden athletics boy”) held the 100m and 200m records at Brighton College, while Sam also played rugby for the first XV. Mother was a talented athlete and father played football for Liverpool reserves.

A member of this clan surviving among the dingos in the back and beyond? It all adds up perfectly.

Rebecca is going to give him “a good thump” on his return, although — unbelievably — he’s trekking in the Himalayas first. And there’s one final worry: “All my friends are ready to pounce,” she says. “I’m really scared about it.”

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