A woman has survived five days stranded without water in the Australian wilderness, resorting to drinking the only liquid refreshment she had on her: a bottle of wine.

Lillian Ip had set out on a vacation to Bright, at the base of the Victorian Alps. But when the 48-year-old failed to check in with relatives on April 30, local police said her family raised the alarm.

Rescue authorities scoured the remote, hilly terrain around 270 miles northeast of the Victorian state capital, Melbourne, for days. Her car was finally spotted at the end of a dirt road by a police helicopter Friday.

Ip doesn't drink, but she told police she had a bottle of wine in her car that was intended as a gift for her mother.

"That got her through," Wodonga Police Station Sgt. Martin Torpey said in a statement. "She used great common sense to stay with her car and not wander off into bushland, which assisted in police being able to find her."

He said Ip was planning on taking a short day trip to a nearby dam, and had only a couple of snacks and some candy with her, but no water.

When she hit a dead end in the road, she realized she had taken a wrong turn. She attempted to turn her car around and retrace her route, but it became stuck in the muddy track. Her cellphone was out of range, making it impossible to call for help.

Aerial footage taken by police shows the moment she was spotted by rescue helicopter - waving her arms on a narrow dirt trail, surrounded by towering trees.

"I thought I was going to die there. My whole body shut down on Friday," Ip told Australia's Nine News network. The day before, she had apparently penned a farewell note to her family. When officers arrived on the scene in a police van, her first request was simple: "Water and a cigarette," she said.

Ip isn't the first person to be stranded and forced to survive on an unconventional diet. A sailor from Dominica made it through 24 days adrift at sea with little more than a bottle of ketchup to sustain him. (Heinz later tracked him down and gave him a new boat.) And when two women vanished for four days in Maine's icy wilderness, all they had left when rescuers arrived was a half-empty bottle of Mountain Dew, frozen solid, The Washington Post reported.

Advice from the U.S. government on preparing for emergencies suggests people require at least one gallon of water per day, along with a solid supply of nonperishable food. Wine - a known diuretic that removes water from the body and can cause dehydration, according to health experts - doesn't make the survival-kit list.

Ip was taken to hospital for observation, where she was treated for dehydration and later released, according to police.

The area where she became lost is popular with four-wheel drivers. Guide maps label the roads near where her car became stuck as remote and potentially steep and slippery - suitable for experienced drivers. Yankee Point Track, where her car became bogged, is marked as a "bush track."

While she couldn't move her car, she was able to use the heater to stay warm during the cool nights of the southern hemisphere fall, police said.

"After being lost in the bush for five days, she was extremely relieved and grateful to see us, and we were just as happy to see her," Torpey said.