The Australian outback doesn't often give second chances, and during weeks in the wilderness, easily pushes the limits of what humans can survive.

With incredible stories of survival, sometimes comes controversy, questions, and suspicion.

I'm Danielle, I'm Megan, and this is off the Trails, so.

We're headed back to Australia.

We are got a couple stories from Australia in this episode.

Oh okay, cool, so let's see.

I feel like we haven't recorded in one hundred years, which is not accurate.

It does feel like there's been a longer stretch, even though as you said, there.

Hasn't been I don't think.

I don't know when.

The last time we recorded was like last week Monday.

Oh yeah, Saice, And it's only Sunday.

So hope everybody's having a good week.

That feels super long.

I guess yeah.

I'm still in Florida recording from my parents' house.

I'm here for another week, so it's been fun visiting with my friends and family here.

And I've just been home working, not doing anything different, all right, So last week we had two new Patreon supporters, so thank you Tim and Cara or Cara.

That's always a tough name because it can go either way.

It can, so I think you covered both options though.

That's right.

First, I'm going to tell a story of Ricky McGee, and I'm going to start his story at the end, so so bear.

With me, Okay, But I feel like there's a there's a strategy here, so I'm curious to see how this unfolds.

Yeah, we'll see if it pays off, right, Yeah, So, during the first week of April of two thousand and six, a couple station hands, which are basically Australia's equivalent term for what in the US we would call just like ranch hands.

Okay, they're heading out to check.

The water levels at a spot where like the cattle sometimes grays or.

Whatever the cattle term is, and they ended up stumbling upon something definitely unexpected, And initially they were pretty startled because out of nowhere, what they described as a walking skeleton starts approaching them, and obviously they are not expecting any humans out here at all, so seeing this very skeletal, frail individual was a bit of a surprise.

Yeah, they'd soon learn this was Ricky McGee and he had been stranded in this remote area of the outback for seventy one days.

He yeah, and he had lost one hundred and thirty pounds or sixty kilograms, which was more than half his weight prior to this ordeal.

He lost one hundred and thirty pounds.

That is how much I weigh.

He lost me in person.

That's insane, my gosh.

So in January of that year, Rickie McGee was thirty five and he was about to start a new job, and that meant he needed to make the very long drive across some of Australia's most remote and pretty unforgiving terrain.

And his new gig was in port Headland, which is town on the northwest coast, and to get there you have to travel along this very long stretch of road that cut through the northern territory in like Western Australia.

And this is definitely not the kind of place where you want anything to go wrong.

I'm not sure where in Australia would be a good place to have something go wrong, but it feels like most of it is a bad idea.

Yeah, I mean, as soon as you stray away from those city areas and like the populated areas there's just this vastness there to like the outback and the other very desolate areas, right, And obviously the stories that we're researching or reading about are not like people like going and running, like their errands and their groceries, so like the only things we ever read about are these extremely isolated areas.

But it just feels like there's a lot of that in Australia.

Yeah, absolutely, And along this road people can drive hundreds of kilometers or even hundreds of min files without seeing another vehicle, which just feels like is that even a road if there's no cars on it.

Yeah.

So it's hot, harsh and just very brutal out here.

In the summer months, daytime temperatures can peak above one hundred degrees fahrenheit or thirty degrees celsius, and then the nighttime temps on the other hand, can be pretty cold, getting down to around the freezing mark.

And of course the terrain here there's really almost no shade.

Most of the vegetation is like low growing shrubbery, so you're not getting any nice tall leafy trees to sit under.

Typically there's almost no water out here, and you can like count out cell phone reception as well, just endless red, dirt and desert.

That's too risky, I know.

I mean, I remember that story.

That we covered of the father daughter who got stranded in the outback and.

How many spare tires did he have with him?

Like four or five?

Yeah, that he had four, and they went through like all of them, right, they went through all of them.

And then we even had a listener reach out and say, yeah, no, that's normal.

Right, Oh my gosh, I don't know if I'm up for driving anywhere where I would need that many spares.

Yeah, that's not for me.

And I think we said that when we talked about it in that other episode.

Probably unfortunately somewhere along his drive where he did end up running into trouble.

Now, exactly what happened next depends on which version of the story you get, or at least which version of the story you believe.

Okay, When he was first rescued, Ricky told the station hands that his car had broken down, which seems reasonable.

He maybe didn't have seventy five extra tires, so that probably would check out.

But later in a book he wrote, he described a different scenario.

He said he'd come across another vehicle that was stopped along the side of the road, and it looked like they were having some sort of car trouble, so he pulled over to see if there's anything that he could do, and with the car there are three guys and they told him that they'd run out of fuel, which really seems like poor planning.

If you go hundreds of miles without seeing anybody.

I mean, you have to be also equipping yourself with four spare gas cans.

Right, so thunderstorm morning?

Sorry, Oh fine, thunder a Sunday thunderstorm.

Mm hmmm, I hope you get that me too, Actually, so, Ricky offered to give one of them a ride to the next town so that they could get some gas, and one of the men did take him up on that offer and jumped in his car.

Now, as we just discussed, since this is the outback, the next town was a very long way off, so they were gonna be on the road together for a while.

At some point, somebody opened some adult beverages.

It wasn't really clear to me who's they were, whether the broken down guy brought them with him, or if they were just Ricky's in his vehicle.

I don't know.

Where they came from.

I assume they didn't drive by a liquor store, so somebody had packed them I guess, okay, But either way, they ended up cracking open a drink and then Ricky says he started feeling kind of hazy and everything went black.

The next thing Ricky remembered was waking up out in the bush, not along the road, not anywhere near his car.

He was just lying in the middle of nowhere, in the wilderness.

And at that point he concluded that somehow this person he had picked up had drugged his drink.

Okay, so that's his just first assumption is that he had been drugged.

Yeah, yeah, I mean that would be so scary waking up to that and trying to piece together what happened.

I don't know that I would assume, well, I guess if you pick up a stranger, you should I don't know.

I don't know what my first assumption would be if I didn't know what happened.

I don't know either.

I mean, it's a very specific accusation to say, well, they definitely drugged my beer.

But I guess at the same time, your low on options as to what happened.

Right, right, and in some version of this.

In some versions of the story, he said that his attacker did not immediately leave.

So another version of the story is that after his memory in the car, he later woke up at their camp and they had a gun but never used it, and the other individuals from the side of the road were there, so he referred to them as like an armed gang maybe, And initially they gave him some water, but after an unknown amount of time, the gang or carjackers or whatever you want to call them, they took his shoes and left.

Okay, that's rude.

It is rude.

And again another version of the story, he says that the person he picked up was just like a regular old hitchhiker.

But regardless of this first part of the story, he was now in the middle of the wilderness.

He looked around and no one else was in sight, and his car was definitely gone.

And if waking up in the middle of nowhere isn't bad enough, because that's pretty high on my list of bad.

He realized that he was in a shallow grave.

Someone had lightly covered him with a tarp and like tossed some dirt on top.

It sounds pretty lazy, though, there was just like a few clumps of dirt.

Doesn't sound like they put much effort into.

But also they may have done him a favor by doing that, because I think that may have obviously kept him a little bit cooler than he otherwise would have been if he had just been dumped out on the road.

But bringing it back to that other episode that we had just mentioned, when his daughter was not doing great towards the end there, he also had dug a hole.

Yeah.

Yeah, so I don't know it.

They probably didn't have his best interest at heart in this scenario, trying to protect him from the heat and the sun.

Sounds like they were actually maybe just trying.

To dispose of a bus, dispose of him.

But you know, maybe that backfired and they actually did him a favor.

Maybe maybe.

And what had kind of either prompted him to wake up or what was going on when he woke up, it was just casually like a pack of dingoes, like scratching around, kind of circling the steamed like a good meal, and he was like, I'm not dead yet.

Scram Yeah, that would be a bit intimidating.

Yeah, So, somehow Riki had ended up in this remote cattle country.

It's just a really brutal stretch of land.

Everything out there is dry.

The creek beds are dry.

Basically you look out and you see termite mounds, just like the rocky ground, like the thorny, like low brush or shrub, and it's really just very inhospitable to all kinds of life out here, even in terms of like small animals, it's pretty limited.

Ricky spent the next ten days or so walking through the northeastern side of the Tanami Desert.

Again, desert, super hot, dry, not ideal.

So if he was already ten days in going through this desert, he had to have found water somewhere somehow.

He does just wait, I'm getting ahead.

And prior to finding a solid source of water, he was constantly battling heat exhaustion, and he said that he was just frequently passing out or blacking out when the temperature climbed into the forty celsius or over one hundred degrees.

But despite how bad the situation was, realistically they could have been worse.

I mean, I guess I could technically always be worse.

But this was the middle of the wet season, meaning there was slightly more water available, and there's also a better chance of running into small wildlife than other times of the year.

Okay, he scavenged whatever he could find to stay alive, but found barely enough to survive.

But he kept going.

He really ate anything he could get his hands on, snakes, srag against slugs, lizards, and even leeches.

Well, I can't why did you?

Oh yeah, I know, I know.

He did find some edible plants here and there, but really not enough to keep you going.

For water, he drank from the cattle dams and scattered water holes in the area, and unfortunately, because this is primarily cattle area, the spots where the cattle frequented also had a lot of manure, so the water was just disgusting.

So, on one hand, not drinking it was certain death, while drinking it potentially illness and death, but not quite guaranteed.

That's a tough one.

And when there was no water to be found, he did resort to drinking his own urine that was coming people do.

Yes, he'd at least let it cool to like room temperature before drinking and hopes that it would dull the taste.

I don't know, Like, really, what's what's worse or hot peat or like lukewarm.

I hate everything about this question.

I don't I think letting gets set is at worse.

I don't know.

Yeah, ew I know.

So during the day he was just getting baked by the sun.

He made some rough shelters out of tree branches, just trying to stay out of the sun as best he could.

At night, the temps dropped and he was just freezing all night long.

Eventually he found an old cattle dam and this was basically just a big stagnant man made pond or watering hole for the cattle.

The water was like green and disgusting, but on the upside it was water.

I feel like that water requires like an asterisk sort of water, sort of water.

He decided that this is where he was going to stay for the time being.

Nearby, he spotted a rusted out cattle trough, so he dragged the trough back to the edge of the water hole and he flipped it over kind of like dug out a little space beneath.

And that was where he was going to sleep.

Okay, almost like a little cocoon.

So charming sounding, I know.

So cozy.

So in this dirt cocoon, this is where he spent almost ten weeks.

What m hm, And I was just gonna be like a pit stop.

No, no, he settled in.

He like put down some roots.

Oh my goodness.

At one point during this ordeal, he developed a painful tooth abcess.

And I'm not a dentist, but I do know that if you don't treat those, they have the potential of getting infected and getting into your bloodstream and potentially like leading to death.

Like a tooth absess, you want to get taken care of.

But since there was no dentist in the area, he had no other option but to just rip that tooth out himself.

Some sources said that he used his keys to just kind of like pry that tooth out, like teeth.

Things like really cringe me to my soul.

Yeah, there's something about dental issues in these scenarios.

It just reminds me of didn't something similar like that happen in that movie cast Away and he had to take one of his teeth out and he hit it with a rock or a stick or something.

I have no idea, but it either way, as you said, it just makes you cringe.

And I cannot imagine how excruciating that pain because it's so tender with whatever issue is already present and right.

And as time went on, where he continued to grow dangerously weak, he was able to stay hydrated with that green, horrible stagnant water, but the distance he was able to travel during the day to search for food became shorter and shorter each day, and at night, to avoid being attacked by animals, he would pack mud at the entrance to his little trough shelter, kind of like sealing himself in because I think we all can appreciate an easy meal, and I think animals are no different.

They're like, hey, this person's on their way out, probably pretty easy to just take a little nibble and it's all ours.

Yeah, And could you imagine how annoying that would have Bed to have to do every day?

Mm hmm.

It's not a reusable door, it's you're just.

Building it new every day.

Correct.

But the alternative was you were going to be dead.

So you get to weigh out the pros and cons.

I guess he really got to look at for the positive in these situations.

Yeah.

So, after seventy one days, Ricky was starving, suffering from malnutrition.

He was beyond sunburned, bug bitten, and suffering from exposure.

His body was breaking down and he was near death this way.

After being found by those station hands on April fifth, Ricky was flown to the Royal Darwin Hospital and medical staff there described him as emaciated, yet surprisingly well hydrated, so apparently the pond of yuck was a good beverage choice.

His quote unquote water that he was off of, oh Man, Yeah, like maybe two percent actual water.

The rest was who knows.

While recovering, Northern Territory police did go and interview him.

Already, rumors and questions were starting to circulate.

People wondered if there was more to the story or for he himself had potentially done something criminal, and after investigating, police determined there was no evidence of any wrongdoing on Ricky's part, but they also couldn't find any evidence to corroborate the various versions of how this whole ordeal started.

After six days in the hospital, Ricky signed himself out and walked away from one of the strangest survival stories out of the outback, and his vehicle was never found, which is interesting, especially because sources talking about the tooth extractions say he used his keys, So did this third third?

Did this other party abandon his car?

Did they take his car?

I don't know how he would still have his keys or did he give his vehicle key and they were like, oh, hey, you can keep your house keys.

Don't worry about it.

Man.

I don't know, we just need the vehicle.

One.

But because especially if he had his keys and they knew the route that he had taken, one could assume that the vehicle would be somewhere along that route, because right, there's no other way to relocate it.

That's really strange though, that it's missing.

Yep, so it's never recovered.

So on to our second Australian outback survival tale, and we're going to nineteen ninety nine when Robert Bogucki walked off into the Great Sandy Desert in Western Australia, no map, no supplies, no way to communicate.

And many people would also say that he had no common sense or logic with him when he walked into that desert, which may be very true.

Yes, Yet for more than forty days he survived with no food and hardly any water.

Robert was thirty three years old.

He was a firefighter from Alaska.

He also had like a variety of other like hodgepodge kind of interesting jobs.

But he was described as somebody who kind of kept to himself.

But he was someone who was both spiritual and had like a strong sense of inner purpose.

He had been in Australia for about eight months at this point, and he'd been biking across the country.

Okay, at some point something shifted in his mind and he deviated from his original plan.

He ended up abandoning his bicycle in Western Australia and just started walking southeast right into the Great Sandy Desert.

Yeah, that's nonsensical.

Why, much like our first desert revisited, this can be very dangerous and harsh territory.

Even the Aboriginal communities who obviously know this land very well, they take serious precautions before heading out for an extended period of time.

And this guy was like, I don't need anything.

His abandoned bike was found by some taurists, and along with his bike was a pile of clothing, plus some food and some water were left behind.

The tourists alerted police and a search got underway pretty much right away.

And I'm not sure if initially, anyone knew that Robert was missing or off grid at that point.

Some sources say that when Robert didn't show up to wherever he was supposed to go, people got concerned, But when the bike was found, I'm not sure if it was connected, if his family knew about the binding of the bike, if they had reported him missing already, I'm not sure.

Okay, So police just knew it was a very strange scene and anyone going into the desert unprepared was likely in danger.

Especially it's strange to obviously ditch your mode of transportation, but it's more troubling that he left behind food and water too.

Mm hmm.

So something just broke and you know, for some reason, he decided to abandon everything and walk into a very very dangerous situation.

Yep, along the ground footprints leading away from the bike and into the desert were clearly visible, so at least they had like a good starting point.

But that also told them that there wasn't any type of accident or this person wasn't picked up my a vehicle.

They're like, nope, this guy ditched his bike and went that way.

I don't know if you're going to cover this or not.

But did his family or friends mention any mental health concerns?

No, But in a minute I will share what his family did know or sort of, you know, I guess.

A major search began, including aircraft, a convoy of vehicles, and three local Aboriginal trackers.

Three days into the search, they found some burned receipts, and obviously this indicates that someone was out there at least trying to survive.

But a hotel receipt was legible enough to get some information off of it, and that's how they knew that they were looking for Robert, because at this point, the police didn't know who they were looking for.

Okay, Well, once they had a name, the police were able to make contact with his parents and his girlfriend and his His parents said that they had received a postcard more than two weeks prior from him saying he was planning to go into the desert, and his girlfriend said she'd spoken to him and he told her that he was planning to spend six weeks in the desert.

So, based on this conversation and this postcard, it does seem like whatever happened was premeditated, Because initially I did wonder too if he had some sort of mental health episode, because it just doesn't really feel logical or like you're in a good place mentally if you're just like making this choice.

But it does sound like it was a premeditated choice.

Still not a good one, but sounds like he had time to think about it.

Yeah, and the scene that he left just felt hasty as well.

Right, Yeah, so police insurgers now knew that, but this just wasn't a case of someone getting off trail and getting lost.

But this was very intentional, which, like you said, just makes the discovery of the bike and supplies even stranger.

If he said that he was planning to spend six weeks out there and brought nothing with him, how are you planning to survive for six weeks, sir?

Right, So, they scoured the desert for days but found nothing, and the date on the postcard indicated that Robert had likely been out there much longer than they realized when the search was started.

Obviously, his parents had received the postcard about two weeks before the police contacted them, So the police are thinking when the bike was found was kind of day one, but it sounds like there was probably at least ten maybe even fifteen days ahead of that that he was out there potentially okay.

After twelve days of searching, which brought them to probably twenty eight days since he'd been out there, authorities assumed that he was dead and the official search was called off, which is reasonable in my opinion.

Agreed, surviving for twelve days in the desert is a stretch in most situations, So again, when they realized that it was probably much closer to a month, survival was very, very unlikely, and I didn see it noted in any of the sources, But I do wonder if, after finding out that he went out there intentionally with no supplies, if police thought that this was some sort of suicide attempt.

Yeah, I mean, because you do have to ask who would willingly do this, and most like knowing the likely outcome.

Right, most reasonable adults know that those conditions are not conducive to living your healthy, best life out there with no supplies.

In one article, one of the lead investigators on this search was talking about how obviously you can't put a price on someone's life, but as we know, there is a huge financial costs associated with these searches, plus time and resources of the personnel searching.

This terrain is also so tough that several vehicles that were used were badly damaged.

So at some point this search is just bleeding dollars and resources well, and.

With it being such a harsh environment, and this has come up in previous stories, is the health and safety of the searchers.

Right, His family wasn't ready to give up yet they ended up bringing in a team of special trackers from the US to keep the search going.

His family wasn't in denial of the situation though they knew that he was likely dead, but they were hoping that this search team could at least bring his remains home.

And this team brought with them three search dogs, and pretty soon they found evidence that Robert was still alive, or at least if he had survived longer than anyone would have thought.

The search for Robert had gotten a lot of media attention, especially when the US search team arrived.

It kind of became a media frenzy.

You know, a lot of times with these international searches, they do get a lot of headlines obviously in the location where this person is missing, but also where this person's from and kind of everywhere in between.

Right, the search team did find Robert's immunization records and his Bible, which were weird things to have taken with you if you didn't bring food.

I mean, I guess a lot of people do carry a Bible in situations like this.

But.

Like your vaccine records, why are you carrying that around?

Man?

That doesn't feel like a necessity for this type of outing, right, especially when he left so much that he should have taken with him, right, So yeah, I'd be curious what his logic was with that.

So what I'm kind of wondering, like, was he using it as like a bookmark in the Bible?

It just feels like, right, Like I.

Was kind of wondering, do they go hand in hand in the sense of he had it tucked in the Bible for either the bookmark purpose or just he just had it in there for some reason, right, doesn't otherwise why would that be there?

But Robert was indeed still alive.

He was wandering the desert, surviving by drinking again a gross water from cattle troughs and trying to catch rain in his hand, so that must have been really productive.

He also dug holes in dry creek beds hoping to reach round water.

I feel like digging holes is a lot of physical energy that you probably don't have in these situations.

It's a bummer when you don't find water.

Oh yeah, all of that wasted exertion.

And just like Ricky, Robert had been walking around barefoot, so during the day he was just being roasted by the heat and the sun and just shivering through the freezing nights.

There were times where he was crawling on his hands and knees, just convinced that he was dying, which as the days were going on, I feel like accurate.

You were dying a slow death.

Yes, he said.

He ate nothing during this time, only drank the questionable water he found.

On day forty three, eight TV crew for sixty minutes Australia spotted him from a helicopter.

Robert was lying in a dry river or creek bed and he was just miles from the nearest road.

He was collapsed and severely dehydrated, but he was alive.

That's incredible.

They immediately contacted rescue services, but they were going to fly him back to wherever they could meet up with a medical helicopter or search cruise, but the helicopter only had room for four people, so one of the men from the TV crew had to hop out and wait in the desert while they flew Robert back to safety.

How do you think they decided, I don't know, thanks back.

I'm guessing that the pilot was probably like, yes, I'm so glad that I'm the pilot.

I am safe from this.

He's like, this sucks for you three though.

Right once he was transported to the hospital, it was determined that he had lost around twenty five kilograms or over fifty pounds.

Some sources say that he lost as much as sixty six pounds.

He hadn't eaten anything substantial in over a month, so arrival without food for that long, especially in those harsh conditions that he was experiencing, is very rare.

You know.

He'd eaten some flowers and the plants here and there, but that's really not enough to combat the calories you're burning just to stay alive.

Right, So, Robert said later that he didn't go to the desert to die.

He'd gone to find spiritual clarity.

So this had been like a spirit quest of some sort, and at a press conference from the hospital, he said, I can't really say specifically what it was.

But I do you feel satisfied that I scratched that itch, whatever that was that sent me out there in.

The first place, Scratch that itch.

Yeah, so we're so glad that panicking your family, getting all these search crews out here, flying in searchers from the US, like expediting, getting these search dogs cleared to enter the country, all these vehicles that were broken.

However many dollars were used.

Uh, that itch was scratched.

Whatever that itch was, he wasn't really even like shories.

I don't know.

It's like I just wanted to do it, and I did it.

That is that is so wild to say.

Yeah, as you can imagine, a Robert story raised a lot of attention but also a lot of questions and eventually outraged.

This had become like a huge international story, and when he was found alive and it was confirmed he'd done this intentional, a lot of people were like, dude, what the hell?

Yeah, mm hmmm.

I mean the people in Australia probably have they probably phrased it differently than that, but same idea, I'm sure.

I mean, if you come back and you see just what it created, and as you listed everything that went into this search for him.

I feel like maybe you just not tell people.

Not that I support people lying, but I don't know.

This might be one occasion where you just say I don't know what caused me to go out there, or just say nothing.

Just say nothing, keep that to yourself.

Yeah.

Yeah.

His family did end up donating twenty five thousand dollars to help cover the costs of the search effort, and Robert did end up publicly apologizing multiple times, thanking everyone that searched for him and everyone that supported the search.

But people were still unhappy with the situation, which is fair.

Yes, I think a lot of people can understand wanting to push the limits or I don't know, get some space to clear your mind, but risking your life and possibly the lives of anyone looking for you for this impromptu spiritual journey, I don't think people can really get on board with that.

Robert said he never meant to trigger a search.

He said he didn't even expect to be reported missing.

He didn't think that anyone would look for him.

I guess he just thought everyone would just move on like nothing happened.

I guess he told his girlfriend he's gonna be out there for six weeks, So that was that.

I don't know, He's like, I feel like people really overreacted here.

I told them where I was going, right.

So he was genuinely surprised that when his abandoned bike was found, with like the clothing and like the strange scene that he left, he was surprised at a full scale rescue mission got underway.

So whiopsie.

The Australian Outback doesn't often give second chances, but both of these men were lucky enough to leave the outback alive.

Both were found barely clinging to life, and each of their stories left the public with a lot of questions.

With Ricky, it's hard to know what to believe about how he ended up in the bush to begin with, he had several different stories.

You know, did his car break down, was he the victim of a crime, or did something else entirely happen.

When Robert was finally found, people couldn't fathom why or how someone could be so reckless, not only with their life, but the lives of people who would ultimately be risking their safety to find him.

But regardless of the how and the why, both of these men managed to survive conditions that would have killed most in days.

For our Patreon listeners, I have a third Australian story to share.

You're giving us a bonus one, so I'm going to put this up for all Patreon members, so even even our free members, you can get a little bonus story that'll go up.

I love that.

I love that for that's right, so go check that out and otherwise.

We will be back next week