An Australian tourist who was due to check in for his flight back to Victoria was instead admitted to a Fiji hospital with mystery stab wounds.

Friends of Clayton Brett have asked for urgent help after he was due to return home to them on May 1. The 43-year-old was reportedly in an induced coma due to the severity of his condition and the onset of sepsis to his stomach wounds.

Clayton’s family only discovered his condition after they began phoning hospitals, according to the NCA news agency. Step-brother Matthew Davis found he was in a Nandi intensive care unit after he failed to turn up for his flight and was not answering his phone.

“We had a bad feeling there was something going on, so we called the hospitals to see if by chance he was at any of the hospitals,” Davis told NCA.

Clayton’s father Terry Brett said that the shock of hearing about his son’s condition was only added to after learning the cost of repatriating him would be hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Clayton’s mother Jenny told 7News that total medical costs were upwards of A$220,000. Owing to the patient’s condition, the medical evacuation flight alone would be A$160,000.

“The worry was, for us, that if we didn’t get him home then we possibly wouldn’t get him home,” Terry said.

“We scrounged around the financial side of it for the Medevac with help from friends.”

Now repatriated, Clayton currently remains in a coma at Melbourne’s Alfred Hospital.

The family have set up a GoFundMe crowdfunding page which has so far raised A$27,500.

Matthew Davis said that he had set up the donations page on Friday for “life-saving interventions” for his step-brother.

Terry told 7News that any traveller planning on going overseas without proper insurance was “silly”.