With Britons still unaccounted for after Monday’s earthquake, Jim Liddell, 59, the Consul-General of the British Embassy in Jakarta, took matters into his own hands, chartering a helicopter to search for them.

After touching down on the beach of the devastated tropical island of Nias, he jumped on to a motorbike to scour villages for survivors.

Last night Mr Liddell told The Times how he had airlifted Jo-Anne Wau, 27, a Briton who had survived for three days on a diet of coconuts.

But that was just the start of her ordeal. Bad weather later forced the rescue helicopter to land on a football pitch in the mountains of mainland Sumatra. Mr Liddell and Mrs Wau continued the 150-mile journey to safety by road, through a treacherous range of volcanoes. They finally arrived at the British Consulate on the east coast of Sumatra at about 2am local time last night.

After three sleepless nights, Mrs Wau sank gratefully into a bed at the consulate cottage.

“I am no James Bond,” Mr Liddell insisted sleepily last night. “It is all in a day’s work. It was very dark so we had to be extremely careful in the mountains. But it seemed safer to keep moving.”

Two British surfers, Ben Clifs, 24, and Ross Nicholas, 26, from Cornwall, are today still stranded on the island because the helicopter seated only four people. “They are safe, well and healthy,” Mr Liddell said. “They have been fed and are being very well looked-after by villagers, who have been very kind.”

The helicopter was the first aircraft to reach the devastated island and friends were last night dubbing Mr Liddell the “Milk Tray Man” for his daring rescue. “Jim is not afraid of rolling his sleeves up,” a fellow diplomat in Indonesia told The Times last night.

Neighbours in the medieval hamlet near Guildford where he owns a house said that they were bowled over by his heroics but that he did not usually cut a particularly dashing secret-agent figure. “He almost looks like the antithesis of a suave James Bond-type figure,” Frederica Rowe, a villager, said.

Mr Liddell was born in Newcastle and still has a faint Geordie accent. He knew Mrs Wau from the Boxing Day tsunami and suspected that she was stranded on the island.

Last night she told how the island had been struck on Monday by a wave bigger than the three-metre high December tsunami. “The earth just sank,” Mrs Wau told her mother by satellite phone last night. “The ground was shaking so violently we couldn’t stand up and the water just rushed in. There were women and children under the water and houses were being ripped down.”

Mrs Wau was once herself a rescuer. After the Boxing Day tsunami she saved the life of Malarti, a ten-year-old girl, who was being sucked down a drain by flood water. Mrs Wau grabbed her by the hair and pulled her to safety.

Mrs Wau has lived on Nias for four years and married a local restaurant owner, Robin Wau, 22, in October. The couple run a hostel for surfers and backpackers, which has been badly damaged. Mr Wau is fine. But Mrs Wau’s mother, Annette Windle, 50, from Sheffield, said: “They managed to get a tent from somewhere, which leaked — but at least they had a bit of cover.”

AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE

MONDAY
Underwater earthquake strikes at 11.09pm local time (16.09GMT) causing waves over10ft high to hit the tropical island of Nias. People escape to high ground

TUESDAY
As the water recedes, survivors return to Sorake beach to inspect the damage and await rescue

WEDNESDAY
Three Britons endure a third sleepless night without shelter or food

THURSDAY
Jim Liddle arrives in a helicopter to airlift Jo-Anne Wau to safety

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