After almost six weeks in the desert, Robert Bogucki is found alive in what quickly becomes known as ‘The miracle in the desert’. But now he has to survive the tabloid television treatment and a fierce public backlash.
The emaciated man is about to discover that being found can be just as hard as being lost.
Credits
Erin Parke VO: It's the 23rd of August, 1999.
Robert Bogucki is easing his emaciated frame down a rocky gully in the Edgar Ranges.
Robert Bogucki: I couldn't even stand up at that point. I just crawled down like a crab. I'm following this creek to water or death, whatever comes first.
Erin Parke VO: The American’s now been missing in the Great Sandy Desert for six weeks. And he’s got no idea that just a few kilometres away searchers are closing in on him, unsure if he’s still alive.
Robert’s found some small puddles of water, and uses grubby fabric to soak up moisture and squeeze some drops into his mouth. According to Robert, it’s the first water he’s consumed in two weeks.
Robert Bogucki: I couldn't even move my throat or anything, couldn't swallow.
Erin Parke VO: The water revives him, it boosts his spirits and Robert feels a fresh determination to walk out of this desert alive. The final one-hundred kilometres to the Great Northern Highway.
He fills his water bottles and starts walking slowly north.
He can hear helicopters buzzing nearby. Then, mid-morning, one passes directly overhead.
It's a chopper chartered by a TV station, Channel 9, and it lands in front of Robert, the roar of rotors shattering his weeks of silence.
Robert Bogucki: I just had the thought in my head that ‘I’m getting on this chopper’.
Erin Parke VO: Three people jump out of the helicopter and rush excitedly over to Robert, the news cameraman already filming and the photographer snapping away.
Robert’s struggling to take it all in. He’s confused that the camera crew has greeted him by name. How do they know who he is?
The raw camera footage captures the entire, bizarre scene.
Robert looks painfully thin and utterly exhausted.
The news crew asks him, ‘What have you been eating?’. ‘I haven’t’, he says.
They continue to interrogate him, despite Robert hinting several times that he’s ready to go, he’s ready for a lift out of the desert.
Robert Bogucki: They didn't offer and I kept suggesting, but they were kinda like, ‘Oh, well we're just talking to you’.
Erin Parke VO: The crew don’t take the hint.
They keep filming, getting Robert to re-enact scenes, walking gingerly through the spinifex, drinking some manky water, and unpacking the meagre belongings in his backpack...
Robert Bogucki: We were gonna sit around there and just talking with our thumbs up our butts.
Erin Parke VO: The TV crew interview and film this weak, malnourished man for almost 20 minutes, before loading Robert on to the chopper to whisk him out of the desert.
Robert Bogucki: Trying to put stuff together, on the helicopter I had to say, ‘Did you guys, did you guys find my bicycle?’.
And they're all, ‘Yep, we found your bike’.
And I'm like, ‘A little more detail, a little more detail please’.
But they didn't provide it, you know. It was just, okay guys, I'm in your hands now, so whatever you wanna do.
Erin Parke VO: Once the Channel 9 helicopter is in the air Robert is given a banana, but after a couple of bites he starts to gag.
Archival media watch reporter: The crew dropped him back down in the Great Sandy Desert and sensitively recorded him retching.
Erin Parke VO: I find the footage hard to watch. Throughout it all, Robert's looking calm and stoic, but he’s scarily skinny and obviously unwell.
In the chopper the microphone catches the crew celebrating their scoop and laughing about beating their competitors, while Robert just sits there listening quietly.
You can see why he’s still pretty cynical about the media.
All this sparks one of many fierce debates that plays out in the wake of Robert’s discovery.
Meanwhile the man in the middle of the storm, Robert Bogucki, is discovering that being found can be harder than being lost.
Archival media watch reporter: He emerged from the bush into the arms of a media maelstrom.
Robert Bogucki: What am I coming back into? I was just kind of longing to be back out there in the peace an quiet.
Erin Parke VO: See, Robert Bogucki’s story isn’t just about what happened out there in the wilderness. It's about the reckoning that came after.
And it’s about those left behind, like the Aboriginal trackers, who I’m about to find out are still wrestling with things that happened out-of-sight-out–of-mind, in the endless expanse of the Great Sandy Desert.
I’m Erin Parke. Welcome to episode 5 of Expanse: Nowhere Man.
Five kilometres away from where Robert’s been found policeman Lindsay Greatorex and the American search team are about to receive the shock news.
They came out here to retrieve a body, but after finding fresh footprints and a stash of Robert’s personal belongings, they’ve been racing against the clock to try find the American alive. Now, all hell breaks loose.
Lindsay Greatorex: I heard the shout. ‘He's been found. He's been found!’. And of course we all run over to Garrison. There was a lot of high fiving, there was a lot of joy, there was a lot of hugs. It was awesome
Archival search crew: What a feel good thing, huh? An American alive!
Lindsay Greatorex: W assumed that he was gonna be brought back to base camp and then, you know a short time later it's like, oh, they're taking him into Broome now?
Erin Parke VO: Confusion reigns as everyone tries to work out where Robert Bogucki is, and where he’s headed.
They soon realise the Channel 9 crew are bypassing base camp – where there’s a trained medic on stand-by - in order to preserve their scoop.
Lindsay Greatorex: This was not a competition to find the man. This was a coordinated effort to find someone alive and bring him home safe and we'll all celebrate in it together. Not a competition who finds him first and who can get the most media coverage out of it.
Erin Parke VO: Channel Nine’s news director defends the crews action. He reckons they never put Bogucki’s health at risk.
Archival Brian Rogers (channel 9 Perth News Director): The nine crew picked up Mr. Bogucki and got him to a major hospital facility for treatment. Mr. Bogucki was in no way at death door. He was in remarkable condition for his ordeal.
Erin Parke VO: Meanwhile in Broome, police boss Geoff Fuller has just got the call that their man is alive. He’s stunned.
Geoff Fuller: Just 'cause they find him. Doesn't mean he's gonna survive it.
It was just so emotional that he'd been found. And yeah, it's like saving me brother.
Erin Parke VO: Geoff picks up his wife Jenny and they rush to the airport, where a throng of locals have gathered to try to catch a glimpse of this miracle man.
The helicopter appears on the horizon and slowly descends.
Geoff Fuller: Dust and crap flying everywhere, but it all just set the scene and out popped Robert.
Erin Parke VO: The mood is jubilant, the crowd clapping and cheering as Robert Bogucki appears on the tarmac - now freshly decked out in a Channel 9 branded shirt.
Geoff Fuller: When I looked up he's walking from the chopper, assisted a little. He was skinny as a rat, but he just walked in little wave.
I thought, and this man can do anything.
I thought, well, you're not going without me. I said to Jenny, ‘Take the car, I'm going in the ambulance with him’.
Erin Parke VO: In the ambulance, Geoff studies the emaciated man. Robert has the look of a wild bushman, with a full beard, gaunt face, and his bones visible under sun-scarred skin.
The ambulance slowly passes the gathered crowd, headed to the hospital.
Geoff Fuller: It was just a bit of like a parade as we went down the street. They were all clapping, a few were cheering. It was great.
Erin Parke: I'm getting goosebumps just thinking about this.
Erin Parke VO: At the hospital, Robert’s settled into a private room and assessed by doctors who put him on a drip to restore nutrients as quickly as possible to his starved body.
He’s lost 27 kilograms and it’s the talk of the town, in a way that is very 90s.
Geoff Fuller: All the girls started referring to his loss of weight as the ‘Bogucki diet’.
So they were all saying, well, next week I'm starting the Bogucki diet and the week after I'm gonna do it.
And it was just a bit of tongue in cheek stuff, but it lightened up the atmosphere.
Erin Parke VO: Jokes aside, everyone's shocked at how Robert’s body's held up under the kind of strain that the textbook’s advise will kill a person.
Within minutes of him arriving a press pack's formed outside the hospital. And that same day Robert agrees to do a TV interview from his hospital bed, in the hope that the media will then leave him alone.
The footage shows him propped up amid the crisp white sheets. He looks frail, but not sick.
Archival Robert Bogucki: Personally, I did not think I was gonna die out there. I felt really alone and really, not desperate, but just without hope at some points. So, it didn't feel like death, if that makes any sense.
Erin Parke VO: Robert's got a dazed look in his eye, as he tries to explain an experience that a two-minute TV news story will never be able to handle.
The hardest question was always going to be, why did he do it?
Archival TV reporter: Bogucki was on some sort of quest, which he had trouble identifying this afternoon from his hospital bed in Broome.
Archival Robert Bogucki: I can't really say specifically what it was, but I do feel satisfied that I scratched that itch, whatever that was, that sent me out there in the first place.
Erin Parke VO: Looking back Robert says the media storm felt claustrophobic. Especially after so much time alone.
Robert Bogucki: The press mangled my words, got everything wrong, nobody seemed to understand exactly what I was saying.
Erin Parke VO: It seems crazy that the media had access to this half-starved man so soon after his rescue.
And I can’t imagine how much more hectic it would have been if it happened today, with the urgency and intensity of social media and online news.
Meanwhile, policeman Geoff Fuller prepares to phone Robert Bogucki's parents, Ray and Betty
Geoff Fuller: I picked up the phone, I was shaking so much and I thought, I'll ring Ray and Betty. I was so excited. I was pumped. And I went to message bank. I thought, ‘Oh my God, it's gone to message bank!’.
So I left them a message that, Robert had been found. Ring me back as soon as you can.
Erin Parke VO: He waits impatiently. Half an hour later, the phone rings. Ray and Betty are out for dinner with friends and they’ve just got the message that their son is alive.
Erin Parke: How was that for you to make that call?
Geoff Fuller: These things only happen a couple of times in your life and, uh, it does affect you and you get caught up in that.
The overwhelming response at the end was just superb.
Erin Parke VO: Not long after, it's Robert's turn to pick up the phone.
Robert Bogucki: I got on the phone with my parents and they're like, you know, started saying stuff like, parents do you know? ‘Were you really prepared to go out there?’ And this and that.
Erin Parke VO: Out in the desert Robert had this overwhelming feeling of calm and mental clarity, that he can now feel slipping away.
His old frustrations bubble up, his parents the embodiment of the straight-laced conservatism that's irritated him since adolescence. And he tells them so.
Robert Bogucki: So, I slipped back into, 'You guys, you know, you're part of the reason that I went out there because the things that you think you know - there's more to life than that’.
And I was saying this on the phone, the phone cut off.
And they didn't hear any of that. And I’m glad, afterwards, I'm glad my parents didn't hear that, me telling them that on the phone right after I came out of the desert.
Erin Parke: Did you say hurtful things, do you think?
Robert Bogucki: Well, it would've probably been in one ear and out the other, but I'm glad it got cut off anyway. Was not necessary.
Erin Parke: Did they sound emotional or relieved or what?
Robert Bogucki: They're never emotional. If they got emotional, it would've just been my mum. My dad, only saw him cry maybe once, once. So no, they were just happy. They didn't get overly weepy.
Archival reporter: Father Ray spoke to his son a few hours ago.
Archival reporter: What was your reaction when you heard from his rescuers that he was alive?
Ray Bogucki: I can't do justice to it. We did not create a scene, we were in a public place, but we were very, very happy and we remained so at the present time.
Erin Parke VO: Within a few days, Robert's girlfriend Janet flies in from the States to reunite with the boyfriend she thought was dead.
The media attention remains relentless, so policeman Geoff Fuller and his wife Jenny invite the couple to stay once Robert’s released from hospital.
Sheltered from the spotlight, Robert starts to recover. Eating copious amounts of watermelon and pottering around the backyard with Geoff.
Geoff Fuller: Robert came across as a very smart, feet on the ground sort of a bloke. I didn't ever push the point of why he felt like he had to go in and test himself in the desert. He just gave a basic little thing that it was something I had to do.
Erin Parke VO: In the days after the search Robert also sits down for a debrief with American search leader Garrison St Clair.
Garrison St Clair: Well, I'm certainly pleased that he was found and we don't take any credit for it.
I think this has always been a, a, a joint effort. If it wasn't for everybody involved Mr. Bogucki would not have been found, and I think he was at a stage where he needed to be found.
Erin Parke VO: As the American searchers packed up and flew back home the story was showing no sign of slowing down.
In fact, like a moody tropical cyclone it was starting to spin in unexpected directions.
His story was polarising.
Some found his willingness to walk away from modern life inspiring. One columnist coined the phrase ‘Bogucki envy’ to describe the widespread desire people felt to get away from it all.
But there were others who were not happy. About the cost and risk of the search.
Archival reporter: Reactions to the American's epic story have been mixed. A combination of hate mail, skepticism, and reluctant admiration for his feat of survival.
Archival politician: I certainly hope that he and his family are prepared to pay.
Archival policeman: We have to look to the cold hard facts. The facts of the matter are that Mr Bogucki went out there by his own choice, and it was an extremely irresponsible thing for him to do.
Erin Parke VO: Robert's parents end up making a 25-thousand dollar donation to the West Australian government,
But it wasn’t enough.
In the days after the search, Robert repeatedly thanked those who'd searched for him.
Archival Robert Bogucki: I feel bad that a lot of people came looking for me. That there was so much spent, time and effort and I'm sorry people had to go to so much trouble.
Erin Parke VO: Reporter Ben Martin had a front-row seat to the angry row that broke out.
Ben Martin: The backlash was pretty fierce. A carload of people went by and yelled out the window, ‘Who's gonna pay Bogucki's holiday?’.
I think if he'd known that there was going to be that much fuss about him I don't think he would do it. He's not an arsehole.
Erin Parke: What do you make then of the fierce, harsh backlash?
Ben Martin: I understand that backlash, you know. What Robert did was extraordinary and it stepped outside the bounds of socially responsible behaviour.
It's a really fine balance between being extreme and having a frontier, pioneer spirit which we celebrate and being someone who's done something a bit weird.
Erin Parke VO: For Robert, it’s exhausting trying to explain his actions to a global audience.
He’d gone out into the desert on a deeply personal search for meaning and connection with God, and now everyone was picking over it for entertainment.
And the question looming over it all, were Robert’s actions selfish, or reckless or maybe just a bit naive?
And it really seems to boil down to the key point that Robert never wanted or expected to be searched for.
You can see in the footage he’s genuinely shocked that his private journey triggered such a big and expensive search.
Robert Bogucki: All that attention was definitely a surprise.
Erin Parke VO: Robert didn’t expect to be rescued, and he was quite accepting of the fact he might die.
So the whole thing straddles this murky moral area where some people viewed it as an exercise in free will to walk into the desert, while others thought he was foolish for not anticipating the trouble he’d cause.
And Robert gets that.
Erin Parke: Did you ever have pangs of regret or remorse perhaps around, say causing your parents distress or people volunteering their time and so on?
Robert Bogucki: Oh no, I felt all that. I felt like I said arsehole. But I have a new term now, dickhead of the decade, because of the way Australians talk.
It's pretty funny when you guys say it.
Erin Parke: Dickhead of the decade.
Robert Bogucki: Dickhead of the decade. So that's how I felt.
Yeah. Wow, I put all these people out not really knowing that it was gonna affect them that bad.
Erin Parke VO: In all of this, there's one person who's voice was rarely heard.
The person arguably most affected by Robert's decision-making.
His partner, Janet North.
When I was in Alaska, she’d welcomed me like an old friend and I was keen to hear her experience of all this.
Janet's always intrigued me, actually as much as Robert does.
In 1999, she gave Robert her blessing to embark on this desert quest and she remained staunch and loyal throughout the fall-out.
So, how did she cope with the knowledge he might die during his self-imposed sabbatical in the Great Sandy Desert?
Janet North: I knew he couldn't be content with living a life, he couldn't tolerate it, he couldn't sustain it, he couldn't embrace it, unless he did this.
You can't make somebody want to live. Not that in any way he was suicidal or any of that, he was just unsatisfied, and you couldn't make him want to be satisfied with something that he couldn't live with, I guess. If that makes any sense.
I thought it was a real lack of spiritual connection. He wanted that connection.
Erin Parke: Had Robert always talked about a desire to go solo into the desert?
Janet North: Usually with most things that we do, he's got his own quiet little agenda in the background that I don't know anything about.
Erin Parke: And how do you find that to be in a relationship with that?
Janet North: I, you know, after all this time, it just is what it is.
Erin Parke VO: It strikes me a generously hands-off kind of love.
Robert and Janet respect each other's independence. Even when sometimes, it must hurt.
Janet North: If it didn't give him the answers he wanted, then I felt it was his choice to choose not to come out of the desert.
I thought that you don't just withdraw your support because you're sad or, you know, your life changes.
You put your support there and you, you keep it there. You don't sit around feeling sorry for yourself.
Erin Parke VO: There’s a stoicism about Janet that feels kind of old-school. I get the sense Robert isn’t always the easiest person to love, but Janet’s humble enough to recognise that she can be hard work too.
While some of the public backlash was harsh, she and Robert were also inundated with the prayers and support from people around the world.
Janet North: Everyone wanted the same thing, which was a good outcome. And that's, it's like a tidal wave hitting you. You don't even know that that can exist in the world. That people who don't know a single thing about you can care so much.
Erin Parke: It must have been pretty touching.
Janet North: It was. It's something you... it takes time to wrap your head around and makes you have a little more gratitude in your soul.
Erin Parke VO: Robert’s actions seemed to hit a nerve. He did something most of us would never dare to do.
He felt lost, and he was willing to put everything on the line to try to feel found.
And it made people ask themselves how happy they were with their own lives. And how far they’d go to find meaning. It’s that idea of ‘Bogucki envy’ again.
When I get back from Alaska I’m straight back to work, feeding the relentless local news cycle.
There's another man gone missing.
An Aboriginal man, aged in his twenties, last seen in a bogged vehicle out bush.
That makes it four Indigenous men vanished in the region in the past two years.
And like Robert Bogucki, these missing men feel like ghosts. Grieved for and not forgotten... but gone.
But unlike with Robert, there’s no international search team.
There are no media helicopters.
Their families crushed by that sense of ambiguous loss. Knowing logically that people can’t just vanish, but faced with a vast landscape that refuses to give up its secrets.
While I’ve been thinking about all of this, I've kept in touch with Aboriginal elder Merridoo Walbidi, who searched for Robert Bogucki back in 1999.
He keeps asking me about the ‘American man’, as he calls him.
Sometimes he laughs about the story, but at other times he seems angry at Robert.
Merridoo wants to take me out to the desert, to where it all played out all those years ago.
And it’s on this trip that his occasional flashes of hostility start to make sense.
He tells me something that changes the way I see the desert. And what Robert Bogucki did.
Erin Parke: So I'm at the Bidyadanga community. Just pulled up outside Merridoo Walbidi’s house.
How are you?
Merridoo Walbidi: Good.
Erin Parke: You ready to hit the road?
Merridoo Walbidi: Yep.
Erin Parke VO: Soon we're cruising down the highway, driving three hours south to the Sandfire Roadhouse, then swinging inland into the desert.
It's that red dirt landscape from the old TV footage of the search. Speckled with pale green spinifex and termite mounds as tall as I am.
Merridoo's in fine form, regaling me with stories and making jokes.
Merridoo Walbidi: ...too late it was in my stomach!
(laughter)
Erin Parke VO: After about a hundred kilometres's Merridoo's ready to set up camp.
Erin Parke: It's taken me a long time to actually get out here into the desert and I'm really glad I made the effort. Because I feel like you can't really talk about what Robert Bogucki did without being here.
There's a biting, cold wind blowing, and you can see for hundreds of kilometres.
Rocky outcrops on the horizon and just waves of pale gold, yellow grass blowing in the wind, and lots of spinifex.
Erin Parke VO: Out in this desert, under the stars, Merridoo seems transformed. He’s relaxed and in charge
He grew up near here, hunting and gathering with his parents, with no idea white people existed. And he reckons, even at age 73, he could still walk barefoot for hundreds of kilometres across this country
Erin Parke: How far do you reckon I could walk across the desert?
Merridoo Walbidi: You? (laughs) Alright, let's go.
Erin Parke VO: But then, Meridoo's mood grows serious.
We huddle around the flickering flames of the campfire, clutching pannikins of hot tea.
Merridoo once walked all the way across this desert, he tells me. When he was a child. With his parents.
Merridoo Walbidi: And I watching my dad. Following my dad, you know, with him hunting, gathering. And dad was a strong man.
We stayed there with the rest of the family, extended family. But everybody was walking off, you know? They had to leave us.
Erin Parke VO: The people were leaving. The other family groups they'd hunt with, dance with, and trade with were mysteriously disappearing from the desert.
Merridoo Walbidi: We went back looking for extended family. Nobody. You can see the fire, but you couldn't find them.
Erin Parke VO: Sometimes Merridoo's family would see the faint glow of a campfire far, far away on the horizon, but they couldn’t catch up. They couldn’t find them.
Merridoo's family, his parents, and his two brothers and sister, they felt like they were all alone in the desert. But unlike Robert, it wasn’t a choice.
One day when Merridoo’s about 12 years old, he is hunting with his father and they see a strange trail of tracks in the sand.
Merridoo Walbidi: And we found a tire mark.
Erin Parke: But you didn't know what it was?
Merridoo Walbidi: We didn't know what it was.
Erin Parke VO: Merridoo had never seen a white man, but here were the signs of them. On his country
Merridoo Walbidi: Dad said, ‘No let's go’.
Erin Parke: Do you think he was deciding, let's go out of the desert?
Merridoo Walbidi: Yeah, let's go.
Erin Parke VO: His parents were piecing it together. Then finally they found an old man, who was living alone on the edge of the desert who told them the news.
There was now a new world and almost all of the desert people had joined it.
They'd gone to the white fella world, the cattle stations and ration camps and townships that were popping up along the coast.
Merridoo’s extended family were still alive, but they’d left their nomadic life for good.
Erin Parke: Do you think maybe your parents would have preferred to have turned back and gone back into the desert, or was it too late?
Merridoo Walbidi: No, dad said, ‘That's it, no more’.
Erin Parke VO: That’s it. No more.
They could never go back. It was too dangerous trying to survive out there alone.
Erin Parke: I think, uh, when I started off looking into the story of Robert Bogucki and what he did and where he went and why, I never expected there'd be so many stories that preceded him.
Erin Parke VO: That night I can't sleep.
As the wind whips my tent I picture Meridoo as a child, walking across this desert with parents. The family feeling so lonely that they left the desert, and the only place they'd ever known.
Erin Parke: It's just crazy that you have this one little moment in time like Robert Bogucki, and it fixates national and international attention on this little patch of desert that no one’s really thought about much.
But what Robert Bogucki did here is just the tip of the iceberg.
Erin Parke VO: Merridoo is subdued as we rattle along the desert track towards home. He makes me stop along a small scrubby turn-off.
Merridoo Walbidi: That’s where we came. Through here, a long long time ago.
See that road there? We walked through that, and there.
Erin Parke VO: It's the place where his family came out of the desert. Where he first started to smell the sea breeze that he'd never felt before.
Merridoo Walbidi: Goodbye. Dad, Mum, and my brother and my sister. I’m back here and I’ll be going back to country. And I'll be always thinking of you guys.
Erin Parke VO: We keep driving. It's as good a time as any to ask Merridoo what he thinks about an idea that's been brewing for a while.
I've been talking to Robert and Janet about them coming back to Broome and maybe back into the Great Sandy Desert where it all began.
I can’t shake this feeling that Robert Bogucki’s story has overshadowed other stories of the desert.
The world cared so much more about a well-to-do white American missing in the desert than any of the other men, the local Aboriginal men, who’re still not found.
And people obsessed over a ‘ miracle’ of survival that last 43 days, while having now idea about Merridoo and the families who lived in the desert for generations and whose skills are largely ignored.
Both Robert and Merridoo survived this desert, and I’m realising there’s unfinished business.
Ahead, on the next episode of Expanse: Nowhere Man, Robert Bogucki's back in the Great Sandy Desert for the first time in 26 years.
Robert Bogucki: Feels like it’s getting closer to where I went in.
Ben Martin: I don’t think it ever sits comfortably with Robert
Robert Bogucki: I don’t really think they understood what I was talking about.
Lindsay Greatorex: It remains a mystery with a lot of these disappearances, because remains haven’t been found.
Merridoo Walbidi: Tell every Australian, all the white people, to be careful.
Erin Parke VO: I'm Erin Parke, host and producer. Grant Wolter is sound designer and producer. Piia Wirsu is supervising producer and Edwina Farley is Executive Producer. This podcast was recorded on Yawuru land.