'Most wanted' fugitive caught in Qld

BRISBANE - One of Australia's most wanted fugitives has been caught and charged after being on the run for 15 years.

Convicted murderer Luke Andrew Hunter, 42, who in the late 1990s was No 4 on Australia's most wanted list and Queensland's most wanted man, was arrested on Sunday morning in a north Queensland town.

A covert police operation traced Hunter to a home at Herberton in the Atherton Tablelands.

Sergeant Mal Meadows said Hunter was in the Cairns watch house charged with unlawful escape from custody.

He escaped from the Borallon Correctional Centre, near Ipswich, in February 1996, allegedly by cutting through a fence with a stolen pair of bolt cutters after working in the prison laundry.

Hunter was last seen in prison clothes, armed with a knife and fleeing on foot from the prison, police said.

The freckled redhead had been serving a 21-year term for murder. He was sentenced at Newcastle in NSW in 1990 and was transferred to Queensland under an interstate agreement.

A warrant was issued for Hunter's arrest after his escape.

It is unclear whether he will appear in the Cairns Magistrates Court or be flown to Brisbane to appear in court.

The former farmhand ranked as No 4 on the nation's most wanted list in 1998, behind the likes of Christopher Skase.

- AAP