A dream holiday for three young Irish women backpacking across Australia ended in tragedy when their car and a truck crashed head-on.
The women, aged between 20 and 25, are believed to be from Dublin, Limerick and Waterford. The Department of Foreign Affairs said it had contacted the families, but had been asked not to release information until their identities were confirmed.
An English woman in the car was also killed. The British Home Office confirmed she was from Hull and was 29 years old.
A Finnish woman was the only survivor. She was pulled from the wreck at Pinecreek, 150 km south of Darwin, on Monday afternoon. She was taken to the Royal Darwin Hospital and was conscious yesterday.
Witnesses said the Ford Falcon station wagon, registered in Queensland, blew a rear tyre before losing control and veering across the highway.
Observers said the car driver made a desperate attempt to avoid the oncoming 50-metre "road train", a term used for long vehicles which transport goods across Australia.
Police investigating the incident said the station wagon's wheels appeared to lock as it lurched under the wheels of the lorry. The truck driver was in severe shock, but uninjured.
One of the first men to come to the women's aid was a retired ambulance driver, Mr Rob Adams, from Melbourne. "I saw the truck spread across the road with a car embedded in front of it. I walked up to see if anyone was hurt and I saw a body. I looked inside and saw a young lady in her early 20s still conscious.
"There was another girl on top of her who appeared to have a very feeble pulse in her throat.
"I was an ambulance officer for 26 years and thought I had dealt with a lot of emotional trauma. But today I found a lot building up again," he said.
Investigators discovered the name of the dead women and the Finnish survivor from passport documents found among the wreckage. Police are using dental records to confirm the identities.
Sgt Russell Ruehland, leader of the police investigation into the tragedy, said one of the young women had bought the station wagon a few weeks ago in Queensland.
"I don't believe the tourists' car was a cheap vehicle. It was in reasonably good condition. This is the sort of thing that could happen to any of us. It was over in a split second. There was not a great deal the witnesses could do.
"It was some minutes before they realised there was a survivor in the vehicle," said Sgt Ruehland.
Police at a press conference yesterday praised the work of an electricity worker who came on the scene soon after the accident. He used the lifting equipment on his truck to pull the car from under the road train, Paul Cullen, a reporter with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, told RTE Radio 1 yesterday.
Mr Cullen said police were investigating the car's tyres for possible wear.
The road the women were driving on, known as Stuart Highway, is 3,000 km long and can be busy at this time of year with tourists travelling between Darwin and Adelaide, according to police. While there is no speed limit on the road, police in Darwin do not think speed was a factor in the crash.
The four deaths bring the death toll on the highway to 28 this year, compared with 23 last year.
The Irish women were believed to have been on one-year work visas to Australia, though it was not known when they arrived in the country.
The impact of the crash was such that their vehicle was torn in two. The boot end of the car was hurled 50 yards from the point of impact, and the front end, which contained the occupants, was flattened underneath the road train. It was the Northern Territory's worst motor vehicle accident in 10 years.