He’s been dubbed everything from “kooky Bogucki” to the “miracle man”. Robert Bogucki is the Alaskan firefighter who in 1999 somehow managed to survive 43 days lost and alone in Western Australia’s Great Sandy Desert with almost no food or water.
The saga had all the ingredients of a gripping story: A mystery sparked by the discovery of an abandoned bike and personal belongings by an isolated track in the outback, a setting that is both starkly beautiful and brutally unforgiving, and a cast of colourful characters that included a “larger-than-life, cigar-chomping” American search and rescue leader known as “Gunslinger”.
It’s little wonder it grabbed world headlines then and still continues to captivate people like journalist Erin Parke, host of the ABC’s new six-part podcast Nowhere Man.
Parke notes at the start of the series that, unlike most missing people, Bogucki didn’t want to be found.
He had “apparently plunged into the deadly desert on purpose, triggering an international saga that caused every person involved to think about death and survival and who we are when everything easy is stripped away”.
The American certainly wasn’t the first person to head into the wilderness alone to test their mettle against nature or search for some kind of meaning or self-realisation.
Today, there’s even a reality-TV franchise in which contestants are dropped into wild locations to try to survive without any human contact and few resources – but unlike the individuals on Alone, Bogucki didn’t have a satellite phone enabling him to “tap out” when the going got too tough.
He was just 33 when he set off on his odyssey. He had been travelling in Australia on a holiday with his partner Janet, whom he told he wanted to spend six weeks alone in the desert. It is a decision that may seem mad to most Australians familiar with our harsh outback conditions, yet seemed to make sense to Bogucki, who was seeking to “connect with his faith”.
“The initial intention was to just find a place in the middle of the desert, just to sit for a week and fast … and contemplate the universe,” he tells Nowhere Man.
What he didn’t anticipate was that people would come looking for him after the alarm was raised by tourists who found his abandoned bike, clothes and other belongings.
A huge search was triggered, with everyone aware that time was rapidly running out for the missing man who didn’t himself think he was lost, yet was wandering through the desert, often dazed and increasingly malnourished and dehydrated, with few supplies except a tarpaulin and Bible that were later also found abandoned.
Parke, a reporter in Broome for nearly 20 years, became obsessed with Bogucki in 2022, embarking on a quest to discover the “why” of his journey. She also looks at how his story sits within the broader history of this vast country.
Nowhere Man includes audio from news reports at the time, along with fresh interviews with those involved with the search, including local policeman Geoff Fuller and reporter Ben Martin. Parke’s narrative paints a vivid picture of the outback landscape, enhanced by sounds ranging from the whistling wind and birdsong, to footsteps in the sand and helicopters whirring overhead.
The Bogucki story became even more bizarre when, after 28 days, the official search was called off. To everyone’s surprise – except Janet, and Bogucki’s Malibu-based parents who had hired them – a maverick search and rescue team flew in from America to look for the missing man.
It was led by a gung-ho guy called Garrison St Clair, said to be ex-military and a veteran of numerous similar operations. St Clair, who asked people to call him Gunslinger and is the subject of an enlightening “bonus” episode of the podcast, is described by Martin as “like a cartoon character – this stocky guy in army fatigues, sucking on a cigar and talking in military parlance”.
It’s the small details shared in Nowhere Man that bolster the story – like the fact that Bogucki was originally assumed to be Asian simply because noodles and chopsticks were found in his belongings. And the fact that the American team arrived with bloodhounds that had to wear booties to protect their paws from the hot desert sand.
In the end, it wasn’t Gunslinger who found Bogucki, but a Channel Nine news crew in a helicopter. He’d been in the wilderness for six weeks, and had walked some 400 kilometres. While his claims of having had no food for four weeks and no water for two might stretch belief, photos of the rescued man show him severely emaciated and clearly near death.
Nonetheless, while there was both relief and amazement at his survival, it also triggered a backlash over what some saw as his recklessness and the huge cost of the search. The question that divided people, as Parke says in the podcast, is: “Were his actions selfish or inspired?”
After emailing with Bogucki for months to try to get an interview with him, the journalist makes the bold decision to accept his invitation to fly to Alaska to visit him and Janet – still with no guarantee that he will go on record. She stays with them at their log cabin overlooking a forested valley that seems about as far removed from the Australian desert as you could get.
It’s no spoiler to reveal that Bogucki does eventually agree to an interview for Nowhere Man, and listeners can decide for themselves what to make of his explanations and reflections.
What is more interesting is what occurs when Parke manages to convince the Alaskan to return to Australia, to retrace his footsteps in the Great Sandy Desert, and to come face-to-face with Yulparija elder Merridoo Walbidi, one of the Aboriginal trackers who helped look for him all those years ago.
Walbidi has his own truths to share, and they are far more heartbreaking than the story which captivated the world back in 1999.
The full Nowhere Man series, part of the ABC’s Expanse podcast, is now available.
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