A BRITISH backpacker is believed to have died when his vehicle collided with a truck carrying timber and exploded into a ball of flames.

The truck and the unidentified backpacker’s sedan smashed head on along the notorious Bruce Highway, south of Townsville in Queensland, Australia on Tuesday at 5pm.

The timber caught fire because of the impact of the crash and emergency services struggled to access the vehicles, 9News reported.

Witnesses said there were “multiple balls of flames”.

One witness said: “As soon as the car hit the front of the truck it exploded into a ball of flames.

“By then it was all over.”

The driver of the sedan was pronounced dead at the scene.

Police have not identified the body because of the condition of the remains due to the intensity of the blaze.

However, they believe the driver was a 31-year-old backpacker from the UK who borrowed the car from another backpacker to travel along the coast from Arlie Beach to Ayr , the Daily Mail Australia reports.

The truck driver miraculously survived with non-life threatening injuries.

A witness described the truck driver and said: “He was good to start with, but then half an hour later you could see what had happened was starting to take its toll on him.”

The Bruce Highway is notorious for collisions and in 2014 was named among the 22 worst roads in the world by UK-based Driving Experience.

It accounts for a fifth of Australia’s toll road and is still identified as Queensland’s most concerning road, despite the millions of pounds of funding spent to upgrade it.

The highway made headlines after seven people died in seven days in August, The Royal Automobile Club of Queensland reported.