FOR almost 16 hours, the mother of three feared the worst.

After a heated argument with her estranged husband in a northern Sydney park on Wednesday afternoon, during which he allegedly injured her arm, the woman watched helplessly as he grabbed their three young children and fled in his car.

From her hospital bed, 25-year-old Natalia Dipalma — who is believed to have separated from her spouse three weeks ago — said to police her husband had told her she would never see her sons and daughter again.

Her fears sparked an extraordinary police hunt for 29-year-old Frank Dipalma, which ended yesterday morning when he phoned a television network to say the children were safe and in his care at a hotel on the outskirts of Canberra.

“It kills me to see on the news that I’m going to hurt the kids, and I’m not like that,” Mr Dipalma said in a call to the Seven Network.

“I just want to spend time with my kids, OK, so if you can just put over the news for me, that I am fine and I have called the police and they are on their way and nothing is going to happen to the kids and I’ll never hurt them.

“I want something out there just saying the kids are OK and I love them and I’ll never hurt them.”

NSW police flashed the numberplate of the car, a 1993 blue Commodore, on 24 electronic billboards along a number of prominent Sydney roads on Wednesday evening, only the second time such action has been taken.

The children — Angelica, 5, Dimitriy, 3, and 22-month-old Andrei — were found in good spirits in an ACT motel shortly after 8am yesterday.

They were placed in the care of police child protection experts.

Mr Dipalma, who has been charged with malicious wounding, is to face extradition proceedings to NSW in the ACT Magistrates Court this morning.

Sydney Detective Inspector Gary Jubelin said Mr Dipalma had co- operated with police when contacted in Canberra.

“From initial observations the children are fine,” he said. “I haven’t spoken to the children … they appear to be in good spirits. I could hear them in the background and they sounded in good spirits.”

Inspector Jubelin said the mother was “ecstatic” and “thankful the children have been recovered unharmed”.

Ms Dipalma and the children were reported to have been living in a women’s refuge since the couple’s separation.

She spent Wednesday night in Sydney’s Royal North Shore Hospital and was discharged at midday yesterday in the company of police.