Ricky Megee was tired. And hungry. And frustrated. He had been squatting for close to an hour near the dam waiting for a frog to appear but luck did not seem to be in his favour.
He was about to give up when he caught sight of one emerging from the water.
Megee was ready. He thrust out his arm and plucked the creature from the water's edge. For a few minutes, the frog struggled uselessly in his hand then went still. Ricky smiled faintly.
Holding the hapless creature, he went back to his cubbyhole a little distance from the dam. Using a piece of fencing wire he methodically gutted the creature, then skewered it on another piece of wire and left it out to dry in the scorching sun. Megee's lunch was getting ready.
The 35-year-old Australian returned to the dam hoping he could find some leeches and maybe even a few caterpillars. He was really hungry.
It was day 40 of Megee's harrowing misadventure in the Australian Outback.
***
"I had done the trip before," says Megee, a resident of Dubai who works as a superintendent in Leighton Contracting in Abu Dhabi, referring to the journey across the Australian Outback in January 2006 – a journey that changed his life and led him to write the amazing book, Left for Dead in the Outback.
He was driving on the Buntine Highway from Brisbane to Port Headland in Western Australia to take up a job there. The road cut through Australia's famous Outback.
Somewhere near the Northern Territory-Western Australia border, he found three men sitting by the side of the road next to what appeared to be a broken-down car.
"I stopped to offer one of them a ride to the nearest petrol station," says Megee.
What happened after this is unclear. Megee, who stands 6' 3" in his socks remembers waking up a few hours later, face down in a ditch. "I woke up to a scratching sound and found a pack of dingoes around me," he says. "I tried to stand up, but was feeling woozy. With difficulty, I managed to chase the creatures away."
Rubbing his eyes, Megee looked around only to realise that he was, quite literally, in the middle of nowhere. The desert extended as far as his dazed eyes could see. He tried standing up but his knees were acting like jelly. Nearby, he could see his car lying partially submerged in a pond.
He tried piecing together what had happened after he stopped to offer his help but his memory of the events of the day was disjointed.
He remembered one of the guys ("the thinnest and youngest of the three") getting into the car… the two sharing a fizzy drink… Megee dozing off… the car that was cruising at around 100km/h veering off the road and careening out of control…
"I remember getting into a fist fight with the guy after he started acting funny. It was at that time that the car went over the embankment," recalls Megee.
Everything gone
With great difficulty, Megee crawled out of the ditch and surveyed his self. He found that his shoes were gone. So, too, was his wallet. He looked in his car and found that all his stuff in it too was missing.
"The only things I had were my car keys (they would later come in handy when he had to prise out his rotting tooth), the shorts I was wearing and the T-shirt on my back. And, oh yes, $12.30 which was in my pocket."
If the car had not been partially submerged in the water, it too would have disappeared perhaps.
Megee knew that he had to get up and walk – at least up to the road where he hoped to find somebody who would help. So he dragged himself out of the pit "and started walking", he writes in his book.
He was dead tired but walked all day and even late into the night till he realised that it would be foolish to continue stumbling around in the dark in case he fell and hurt himself. So he curled up into a ball and tried to catch some sleep.
He woke up when it started to rain late in the night. It was a good thing because his throat was parched. He lapped up what rainwater he could cup in his hands. Although the shower was shortlived, it did help slake his thirst a bit. When the rain stopped, he went back to sleep.
When the sun began to wash his back, he woke up and remembered that he needed to be heading east ("I knew the sea was in the east and for some reason was sure I would find somebody if I headed that way"). He resumed walking.
***
I interrupt Megee to ask him whether he did the right thing in stopping to pick up the hitchhiker, particularly when he was driving alone.
"Look at me, mate," he replies. "I am a big guy (he could easily tip the scales at around 90kg), and I can look after myself. Also, when travelling alone, one is prepared for some surprises. That's why I chose to offer a lift to the thinnest and youngest-looking guy in the group. He was dressed in a pair of shorts and a T-shirt and I could see he was not carrying any weapons.
"But something went dreadfully wrong." The first day in the Outback was pretty okay, he recalls. "I was sure somebody would find me. 'It is just a question of time,' I kept telling myself." But what he did not know was that he was wandering on an abandoned 2,500 square km cattle station far away from any road or human habitation.
So when did he start losing hope?
"Actually even after the first couple of days, I never believed I was lost. I was sure I would find somebody, something… a road, a car... After the third or fourth day I kept thinking 'Okay, today is the day I will be found'." But that day did not seem to be dawning in a hurry.
One step after the other
Megee's only hope was to keep walking till he found somebody. However, the going was not easy. The rough terrain began to lacerate his bare feet. To protect them, he stripped off his T-shirt, ripped it in two and wrapped his feet in them. "I had to, because the terrain was becoming really hot during the day," he says. And what about the nights?
"The nights were cold – just like in the desert here," he says. "The first couple of nights I spent in small caves.
I used to make a crude bed of branches on the floor and roll myself into a ball over it to keep warm." But he soon found that staying warm and finding food and water were the least of his problems.
"The mossies, man," he says. "As soon as the sun set, mosquitoes would appear in the hundreds. In fact, the second morning after I was in the Outback, I woke up and was alarmed to see spots of blood all over my body. It took me a moment to realise that they were splotches of blood from mosquitoes I had killed in the night.
"I realised that if I did not do something about them, I would die not of hunger or thirst but of blood loss. Imagine thousands of mosquitoes biting you. Even if they took just one drop of blood each, I was losing quite a lot of blood every day."
Going forward
"During the first two-and-a-half weeks, I covered close to 90km (months later a few friends and I went back to the area and checked it out)," he says. But he did not seem to be reaching anywhere – at least any place where there were people.
But was he at least headed in the right direction?
"Basically yes, I was," he says. "I was chasing rain clouds and was heading east – to the east coast where I was sure I would find a road or something."
But all he found was desolate terrain. In any other situation it would have been picturesque but now it was forbidding. And frustrating. He survived on "some desert vegetation" and water whenever he could find it.
Some time around day 16, Megee came across a rundown windmill. "I decided to camp out there. The blades of the windmill were lying on the ground. With difficulty I twisted them to form a kind of tent and decided to use this is a shelter. I gathered clumps of grass to make a kind of soft bed and lay there hoping somebody would drive by and spot me." But nothing of the sort happened. Megee would walk around for some time during the day "then by evening return to the shelter – my refuge from the pests, those mossies."
And what did he eat? "Frogs, mate," he says, smiling broadly. "They were in plenty – remember it was just after the rains. I used to have my fill of water from a nearby stream and supplement my diet with grasshoppers and caterpillars."
How did he catch them? How did he know which ones he could eat? Had he taken any desert survival courses? I ask him.
"No, nothing of that kind," he says. "The only survival courses I know of are the ones I had seen on TV. And I did see quite a few of them particularly a series on how aborigines survive in the harsh desert. I do know people eat frogs. So I did not think twice about eating them."
"Was it easy?" asks Christopher List, our photographer, listening to him intently. Megee laughs. "The frogs were OK [to eat]," he says. "But they were not enough. So I used to eat grasshoppers, crickets… I would pull off the grasshoppers' wings, pull off their legs and eat them. They taste quite sweet you know. When I was out looking for some vegetation to eat, I would find caterpillars which I knew are good sources of protein. They were pretty tasty. As for the leeches, I had to eat them real fast or they stung the lips. "The worst was a cockroach I once tried to eat. It tasted horrible."
***
Megee spent a few days near the windmill but when he did not find anybody driving by, the dejected man decided to wrap his feet once again in the torn T-shirt and "just keep walking".
After covering a few miles he reached a dam where he decided to pause for a while "because there was water close by".
After drinking some, he set about digging a cubbyhole which he covered with a few branches and grass. "I tried to make it as mosquito-proof as possible," he says.
"Interestingly, the whole time I was there, I could hear the drone of planes taking off and landing. I knew I was someplace close to where people were and was hoping someone would come by." But there was no luck.
He wanted to continue walking but was a trifle apprehensive: "There was quite a bit of food here – frogs, caterpillars, grasshoppers… there was some kind of vegetation too which
I thought I could eat. I had already started losing weight and I realised that if I was actually stuck out here, I had better start finding food that could sustain me. I knew that as long as I had food and water, I could stay alive. But if I continued forward and did not find water or food, I would be dead."
It was Day 25. The end to his ordeal seemed nowhere in sight.
The long walk
It was around Day 30 in the Outback. Megee spent around 10 days near the dam "till the sound of the planes began to bug me," he says. "I decided to head someplace where I would
not be hearing this constant drone of aircraft."
But why did he not walk towards the sound of the aircraft? "Because I really did not know how far away the airport was if there really was one." So, with the sun as his compass and the rain clouds as his guide, he decided to… walk.
"I must have walked for about 8-10 km. I passed out a few times due to dehydration and hunger. Once when I woke up, I found I was sizzling in the sun but when I looked around I saw something which gave me some joy."
No, it was not a car coming down the road. "I was in the middle of this brushland but in the distance I could see a mound covered in green. I knew that if the land was green, it indicated there was water close by, so I began making my way to the mound." Megee was not wrong.
"It seemed to take me ages to reach the place. I was stumbling and falling... I practically crawled the last hundred metres towards the mound. And when I reached it I found that it was actually close to a dam. There were three big water holes and it was like... brilliant! I could not believe my eyes. I was actually close to a source of water!"
What was the first thing he did?
"I jumped right into the water. That was the first thing I did. I must have spent a couple of hours in the water
just soaking in it. I gulped down mouthfuls of water. Then I crawled out of the dam and lay down on the grass for a little while, then crawled back into the water…"
Once he regained a little strength, he looked around for a place where he could rest for the night. Fortunately for him, he found a cattle trough that was lying in the dam. "I dragged it to the top of the dam and turned it upside down. This would be my new home for a while."
Since he had made up his mind to stay near the dam for a few days or till help arrived, he decided to make it as comfortable as possible.
"I took off the two bits of my T-shirt which I had used to protect my feet (the cloth was almost in tatters by now), and strung them across either ends of the trough. One end I sealed with grass and brush and mud – all to keep out the mossies," he says.
"The other end was my door to enter and exit. Just as the sun was going down, the mosquitoes would come out and I would slip inside my cubbyhole, pull down the T-shirt bits and seal the opening with branches and leaves. There is nothing like getting a good night's sleep.
"It was, of course, not totally mosquito-proof, but I did not mind spending the night in the company of two or three of them.
"Every morning, I would wake up, go down to the dam, have a wash, catch a few frogs or leeches, prepare a meal and wait…"
What kind of thoughts passed through his mind as he waited for help to arrive?
"Food," says Megee. "Even my dreams were of food… that I was having large double or triple burgers, large milkshakes, piles and piles of food…
"I love cooking and I used to dream of cooking a huge meal for myself. Spaghetti bolognaise, steak… I used to keep thinking about what would be the first meal I would eat once I am found and taken back to civilisation – spaghetti maybe, burgers, milkshakes…"
Food supply down
Did he ever give up hope? "Well, after the first month, I was sure I would be found any day. But after the second month – after 60 days in the harsh desert – I thought it was all over and that I was going to die. I thought I would not be able to survive any longer and I resigned myself to my death.
"Also, my food supply began to dwindle. Initially, I used to do two food runs a day – I used to collect food in the morning and eat it during the day. In the early evening, I used to do a second food run and have it later in the evening.
"But after some time, maybe because I was eating a lot or maybe because the rains had eased a bit, the frogs started to disappear. Then the greenery began to die out and the leeches started to disappear.
"I realised that if I did two food runs, I would run out of food. So I had to stop eating twice a day."
Soon he found that it was becoming increasingly difficult to find food. "I was getting weak and could not chase and catch grasshoppers and crickets. That's when I started to think that I was going to die. In fact the last week [before I was found] I almost gave up hope of anybody finding me."
Did he regret making the trip?
"No, I did not," he says. "But after around day 60, I started getting angry and frustrated… I had done all I could to stay alive for so many days and now to find that it was all a waste… that I was finally going to die… I could not come to terms with that."
Sealing his fate
Why did his family or friends not inform the authorities when they failed to hear from him for so long?
"They did," he says. "But it was too late and I had inadvertently messed up my case a bit."
Megee made the mistake of telling his family not to panic if they did not get a call from him for some time. "I told them I would be travelling so I might not be able to call home. But just before hitting the road, I told a friend of mine that I would be in Alice Springs in two days."
However, when the friend did not hear from Megee after even a week, he called Megee's sister and asked her whether she knew his whereabouts.
She said she didn't, but decided to wait for a few days before raising the alarm. "When my folks did not hear from me after a couple of weeks, my sister called my mom. One thing led to another and when they did finally alert the authorities, it was Week Six."
The police checked the main highway but because Megee and his passenger had veered a few kilometres off the road and because his car was lying in a pond, they failed to spot it. "They might have also thought that since I had gone missing for so many days, the chances of finding me alive were remote. One petrol station attendant did remember seeing me and my car and but that was not of much help."
***
Then on Day 71, the man who was given up for dead in the Outback heard a sound that was perhaps the sweetest piece of music to his ears – an automobile coming his way.
"Man, it was as if a hundred Christmases had arrived at the same time," says Megee, his eyes lighting up with joy thinking about that day. "For a moment I could not believe my ears. I staggered out of my humpy, screamed as loud as I could while waving my arms, then collapsed and passed out with sheer exhaustion."
There were two men – cattle station hands – in the vehicle and they were getting the station ready for the cattle season – checking fences, water holes, etc. "They later told me that they freaked out when they saw me." But who wouldn't? Megee who had lost 60 kg in 71 days and looked like a walking skeleton.
He was taken to the station house where he was given food, water and essential medical aid. The next day,
a team of doctors arrived and after checking him took him to Darwin.
***
How did it feel to be back in the midst of family and friends and people after spending 71 days alone?
"I was reluctant to trust people," says Megee. "It did not matter who it was – friends, family…"
For months, he was scared of being in the outdoors: "I used to find reasons not to leave home. If friends called me for an evening out, I would offer excuses so I did not have to leave home. I was scared to go out. For the first time in my life I was actually scared to spend time away from my home.
"My wife Katie used to say, 'Can you go and buy this thing?' and I would say 'yes', but would be scared to leave home to buy it. She had to do all the things herself."
Does he have nightmares of his ordeal?
"I used to have nightmares. Terrible ones. It's weird because when I was out there I used to dream that I was at home and wake up to find that I am in the desert. But when I was at home I used to have dreams in which I am lost in the desert and never really found. So I used to get up and put on the lights, touch people and things, turn on the taps, touch running water, open the windows… I needed to reassure myself that I was really at home and in the midst of people.
"The mind can play really funny tricks on you. You might think you have a mind of your own, but the mind has a mind of its own."
Even today, three years after the ordeal, some incidents or things trigger memories of his days in the Outback.
"The other day we were out camping near the wadis, and when I was breaking wood for the campfire, memories of building the humpy came back to me. It left me with a sick feeling in my stomach."
Did he ever go back to the place where he spent those harrowing days? "Oh yes, I did. Once. To make a documentary about my experiences there. I also took some pictures. It truly freaked me out. In fact the first day we were shooting out there, I felt I could not do it. In the middle of the night, I felt as though it was happening all over again and that I was lost in the middle of nowhere."
Then why did he agree to do the documentary in the first place?
"I wanted to get it out of my system – all my experiences in the Outback, the hardships I endured… I thought revisiting the place would make me realise that it is all over. But I realise that it is a part of my life. It is not going to go away."
Even after three years and an amazing book. Left for Dead in the Outback is available at all major bookstores.
Filmmakers in Bollywood, India's movie industry, are notorious for borrowing liberally from foreign films far and wide, especially Hollywood.
