Updated, 8.51

AN IRISH WOMAN has been killed in a car accident in Australia, which left her boyfriend hospitalised with serious injuries.

Kelly Meehan, 31, from Newmarket-on-Fergus in Co Clare, died after the accident on the Great Northern Highway between Perth and Wyndham on the country’s western coast.

The accident occurred in a remote part of the country on Monday morning, when a car veered onto the wrong side of the road and struck the hatchback in which Meehan was travelling.

Her boyfriend, 26-year-old Paddy Gibbs – reported by the Limerick Leader to be from Ballinacurra in Co Limerick – was seriously injured, and has broken both legs.

The couple had met in Trinity College – and were only just returning to Australia from a trip home, where Gibbs’ family had gotten to know Meehan for the first time.

The accident occurred early in their nine-hour drive from Perth back to their home on the west coast, and Gibbs was brought by air ambulance to a hospital in Perth after being cut from the wreckage of the car.

Mr Gibbs told today’s Irish Independent that his son knew, when he was being attended to, that his girlfriend had been killed.

Gibbs is an accomplished sportsman and had previously represented Ireland at international level in Australian Rules Football.

The highway on which they were travelling extends to over 3,200km – and in some places counts among the most remote roads in the world, with no rest stops or refuelling points for hundreds of miles at a time.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Foreign Affairs this morning confirmed that consular assistance was being provided to Meehan’s family through the embassy in Canberra.