Finding Robert Bogucki, the man who disappeared on purpose

Australia Broadcast Center

a day ago

In 1999, an American trekked into the Australian desert alone, sparking an international rescue mission. Decades later, he returns to meet the people who tried to save him from himself.
More than 26 years ago, Robert Bogucki set foot in the Great Sandy Desert. ( ABC News: Andrew Seabourne )
Two men are walking down a desert track.
They are from different worlds, but they have one thing in common.
They know what it's like to be alone in the vast outback wilderness of central Australia.
They know how the heat sears your skin, the way thirst chokes your throat, and the sound dingoes make when they howl in the night.
The lives of these men — an Aboriginal elder and a well-to-do American — intersected in bizarre circumstances a quarter of a century ago.
In 1999, Robert Bogucki deliberately walked into the Great Sandy Desert, triggering one of the biggest land searches Australia had ever seen, and a fierce public backlash.
Robert Bogucki was found after six weeks alone in the desert. ( AAP: Robert Duncan )
He was found after six weeks alone in the wilderness, in what became known as the "Miracle in the Desert".
It's an incredible story, but the questions of why Robert did what he did, and what he learnt when he skirted so close to death, remained unresolved. Until now.
Robert is back where it all began, in remote northern Western Australia, for the first time in 26 years.
"I never thought I'd come back," he says.
"It's hard to say how it feels — but there's anticipation."
For Yulparija elder Merridoo Walbidi, who was part of the Australian team that searched for Robert, it's a chance to resolve unfinished business.
Yulparija elder Merridoo Walbidi was among the Aboriginal trackers called upon to join the search team looking for Robert Bogucki. ( ABC News: Andrew Seabourne )
"This American bloke, he had no idea what he was getting himself into," Merridoo says.
"This is dangerous country. He shouldn't have gone into the desert. He had no idea how quick he could've been dead."
The Robert Bogucki saga made international headlines and became one of the most celebrated feats of survival in the world.
But as the key characters reunite at the scene for the first time, it will become clear that this is a story that's much bigger than one man.
The circus in the desert
It all began with the discovery of a battered blue bicycle on a remote desert path.
A group of tourists found it by accident, and reported it to local police.
Senior Sergeant Geoff Fuller took the call.
"They'd found this push bike, along with some bedding, men's clothes and empty water bottles," he recalls.
"We were concerned straight away — it was a weird place to leave a bike, so we started searching straight away."
Police officers travelled 400 kilometres south from Broome to gather evidence and film the strange scene.
The eerie footage shows the shiny metal frame of the bicycle glinting in the sunlight. A set of footprints leads east, away from the bike — straight into the Great Sandy Desert.
It's one of the most dangerous landscapes in Australia, spanning hundreds of thousands of square kilometres.
No roads, no petrol stations, no people. Just a wide expanse of sand crawling with snakes, spiders and scorpions.
And so the pain-staking search begins, a convoy of cars snaking slowly through the desert, following faint footprints in the soft sand.
Police recruit three local Aboriginal trackers to lead the way, including a young Merridoo.
Merridoo (left) joined Peter Nyaparu Bumba (centre) and Mervyn Numbargardie (right) to follow Bogucki's footprints through the desert. ( West Australian Newspapers Limited: Robert Duncan )
"I was thinking: 'Who's this crazy man gone into the desert?'" he recalls.
"We didn't know if we were looking for someone who was going to be dead or alive."
Also along for the ride is rookie news reporter Ben Martin, filing updates down a satellite phone.
"We inched along in this vast landscape, with no idea who this mystery man was," he says.
"Each night we'd roll out a swag under the stars, and every morning we'd start again at 4am."
He remembers the nagging feeling that stayed with him during the search, "that over the next sand dune, we might find a dead body". ( ABC News: Kenith Png )
On day three of the search, police make a breakthrough.
They find a hotel receipt buried in the clothing that was left with the bike.
The ghost they are stalking has a name: Robert Bogucki.
"It was a game changer," recalls Senior Sergeant Fuller, now retired.
Immigration authorities confirm the missing man is an Alaskan tourist who had arrived in Australia eight months earlier.
When police track down Robert's parents and girlfriend in the US, they have startling news.
The Boguckis reveal they've received a cryptic postcard from their son, dated two weeks earlier. He'd written that he was planning to cross the Great Sandy Desert.
Robert had gone into the desert on purpose. And the date suggested he'd been out there much longer than police had realised.
"We'd had no idea what we were dealing with," Senior Sergeant Fuller says.
Robert's girlfriend Janet had spoken to him just a few days before he'd set out. She tells police he planned to spend six weeks alone in the desert.
Retired police officer Geoff Fuller remembers the moment investigators discovered that Bogucki had gone into the desert alone on purpose. ( ABC News: Andrew Williams )
A fit, educated young man intentionally plunging into terrain that could kill you within a couple of days. Who would do such a thing?
It was a troubling question for the young officer assigned to the case, Ray Briggs.
"I've done a lot of searches for people missing in the bush, and they always want to be found," he says.
"Robert Bogucki was different. He wasn't lost. But he didn't want to be found. And that made the search a lot harder."
By this point, Merridoo and the other Aboriginal trackers are worried about where the search is leading them, and what they might find.
They know this country. And they believe there are dark spirits following the American.
"That's how the spirits play their game — they let you go out, and they can lift you up," Merridoo explains.
"It's very dangerous ... the spirits will come and grab you, and take you away."
The trackers make a call to head home.
Over the next 10 days, as WA police charter helicopters, planes and troop carriers to scour the desert for their missing man, an uncomfortable reality sets in.
Survival experts advise Robert Bogucki has almost certainly perished, while the extensive search is becoming more expensive and dangerous by the day.
On August 8, 28 days after Robert Bogucki had set off into the desert, Senior Sergeant Fuller made one of the most difficult decisions of his career.
"No-one wants to have to put a price on a human life," he reflects.
"But we were damaging vehicles at a rapid rate, and we'd had no fresh sightings. I had to make the call — we were calling off the search."
Robert's girlfriend Janet, who'd flown to Broome to assist with the search, is staying in Geoff's spare room. He breaks the news gently, tears rolling down his face.
"I told her that Robert was unlikely to be alive, and we couldn't continue the search."
"She understood. She gave me a hug, and that was that."
Before Janet flies home, she needs to give Robert a fitting farewell.
She gets his initials tattooed on her ankle, then makes a pilgrimage into the desert, where she leaves a bottle of Tabasco sauce on the sandy track — "if he saw it, he'd know I'd been there".
After the ceremonial trip, Ben Martin offers Janet a lift to the airport.
"And as I dropped her off she leaned in and said something unexpected. She said: 'The green berets are coming.'"
Things were about to get a whole lot weirder.
The Americans arrive
Just as the local search effort was winding down, Robert's parents had hired an American search team to fly and retrieve their son's body.
Local media couldn't believe their luck as the new squad touched down in Broome. The 1st Special Response Group (1SRG) was a highly skilled unit led by a larger-than-life character known as Garrison St Clair.
The unit was led by a cigar-toting American kitted out in army fatigues, known as Garrison St Clair. ( ABC archive )
"He was like a cartoon character — this stocky guy in army fatigues, sucking on a cigar and talking in military parlance," Ben Martin recalls.
Police officer Ray Briggs didn't know what to make of the brash Americans.
"There was this time I call the star-spangled banner moment," he remembers. "I actually said to him: 'Garrison, you need to be careful out here.'
"And I'll never forget it for as long as I live, he said: 'Ray, let me tell you. I started my military career during Vietnam and I ended it during Desert Storm, and during all that time, I never lost a man in combat. I'm not about to lose one out here in the Great Sandy Desert.'
"And I thought, are you taking the piss?"
The team had brought three specialist search dogs — fast-tracked through customs and equipped with leather booties to protect their delicate paws from the hot desert sand.
The story had all the makings of a tabloid sensation — a missing man, a treacherous landscape, a grieving girlfriend, and American mavericks here to save the day. News crews started jetting in from the US and UK.
"As soon as the Americans arrived, things went from zero to 100, it went really nuts," Ben Martin says.
Ben remembers the intensity kicking up a notch after the American search team arrived. ( ABC News: Kenith Png )
As a second search for Robert Bogucki got underway, an entourage of media helicopters buzzed overhead.
Internal police documents show the new mission was aimed at body retrieval — experts were advising Robert would most likely have died of dehydration or exposure within a week.
But a few days after the Americans arrive, a cascading series of events takes everyone by surprise.
First, a fresh pile of Robert's belongings is found near the Edgar Ranges — a tarpaulin, Robert's immunisation records, and his bible.
A stash of Bogucki's belongings were found weeks into the search. ( ABC archive )
Amongst the items left behind on the blue tarp was a yellow scrap of paper — Bogucki's immunisation record. ( ABC archive )
The idea that Robert would abandon his bible led some in the search party to believe that he had given up hope. ( ABC archive )
It was the first clear sign that they were closing in on him.
The next day, Ben Martin is out searching with the Americans when they spot a large 'HELP' sign spelled out in pale rocks on a red plateau.
"I thought: 'My goodness, maybe we're getting close. Maybe he's still alive,'" he recalls.
"And the fact that there was an arrow pointing north, it again, it gave us direction. It gave us somewhere to go."
Minutes later, word comes through on a crackly two-way radio call.
Robert Bogucki has been found alive, in a rocky gully in the Edgar Ranges, after 43 days.
After 43 days in the desert, Robert Bogucki was spotted by a news helicopter in a rocky gully. ( AAP: Robert Duncan )
He is emaciated, and dazed, but alive.
The miracle survivor, picked up by a Channel Nine news chopper a few kilometres from where the Americans had been searching, is flown straight to Broome, where an eager press pack capture his ginger steps across the tarmac.
Doctors at the local hospital discover he's in remarkably good health, and within a few hours Robert gives an impromptu press conference from his hospital bed.
"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."
Miracle or madness
Reflecting on this moment 26 years later, Robert says he never expected his private spiritual journey to trigger a major search operation and attract international media attention.
His aim was to connect with his faith. And Robert was willing to die in the desert to test whether God was present, and wanted him alive.
"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 says.
During the journey, Robert says he went four weeks without eating, and two weeks without water — longer than experts usually advise the human body can survive.
"There was a time that I was passing out frequently from the sun and the heat, and at that point modern science would say, 'oh you're about to die'," he says.
"But I was just feeling elation. It didn't feel like death, it felt like encouragement to live."
In the wake of his rescue, Robert and Janet were inundated with well-wishes and messages of support from strangers around the world.
"The kindness is like a tidal wave hitting you … it makes you feel gratitude in your soul," Janet reflects.
"And Robert firmly believes most of the reason he survived was that emotional outpouring of support from people he didn't know."
But there was also fierce public backlash from politicians, police and media commentators who regarded his actions as selfish and reckless.
Newspaper headlines in the days and weeks after Robert Bogucki was found questioned his motives. ( The West Australian )
The Bogucki family made a $25,000 donation to offset the costs of the search mission, while Robert offered his repeated apologies and thanks to the public. But his behaviour had struck a nerve.
Going on an extreme adventure to break a record was one thing. But to risk your life — and potentially others' — on a spiritual quest? That was another.
What was largely overlooked was that Robert never intended to be reported missing, and never wanted to be looked for — he was genuinely shocked that his bike was discovered and a search had ensued.
"I felt bad about all of that — I've coined the phrase 'dickhead of the decade'," he chuckles dryly.
"That's how I felt: I put all these people out, not knowing that it was going to have that effect."
Returning to the desert
The saga of Robert Bogucki has become part of local folklore, but basic bits of the storytelling have been wrong.
Robert was never "lost" in the desert — he knew where he was, and he wanted to be there.
And he was not in what the media of the time regularly characterised as "no man's land". Robert had ventured into ancient and occupied land, belonging to the Karajarri, Nyangumarta and Mangala people.
Twenty-six years later, he and Janet have returned to pay their respects to the Aboriginal trackers who assisted in the early days of the search.
More than 26 years after he was found in the Great Sandy Desert, Robert Bogucki is coming back. ( ABC News: Franque Batty )
In a convoy of 4WDs, they set off from Broome. ( ABC News: Andrew Seabourne )
Janet North is here with Robert, for the first time since she made her symbolic farewell in 1999. ( ABC News: Franque Batty )
As the group drive further inland, they near the turn-off where Robert went walking into the Great Sandy Desert. ( ABC News: Andrew Seabourne )
This is Merridoo's land, and he's calling the shots. ( ABC News: Franque Batty )
As the group rattle down the track in an old 4WD, Merridoo Walbidi is clearly calling the shots.
He's glad the American has come back to honour this country, but there's annoyance too.
Because Merridoo knows first-hand how quickly people can die in the desert, and the legacy of pain left behind.
Both these men made gruelling long walks across the Great Sandy Desert.
One was looking for a reason to live, while the other was just trying to stay alive.
As the two men sit cross-legged under a small tree on the edge of the desert, Merridoo shares the story of his past.
Merridoo Walbidi was born in the early 1950s, among the last desert families living untouched by colonisation.
Life in the desert was precarious — you had to know the landscape intimately to secure enough water to survive.
"It was a hard life. A very hard life," he reflects.
"I'd walk for long time with my father — he was a tall man, a warrior, and he taught me hunting."
But as Merridoo approached adolescence, things were changing.
"The people were all gone. We couldn't find them. All our extended family — nobody," he says.
There was a new world. The whitefella world. The desert families were moving to the white settlements popping up along the coast, either walking voluntarily into the cattle stations and townships, or being rounded up on trucks by native welfare.
Life was getting more lonely in the desert, and that made it more dangerous.
Then, when Merridoo was about 12 years old, something terrible happened.
His youngest brother fell sick.
Merridoo remembers the pain his family felt when his youngest brother died. ( ABC News: Andy Seabourne )
"He was only little one, maybe seven or eight years old," Merridoo says.
"He drank some bad water, maybe it was dirty water, from animals.
"I remember him laying there, on the ground, and he couldn't breathe properly."
The little boy died not long after.
"I can still picture it … where he was laid. We couldn't bear to look. It was the shock of our lives," Merridoo says.
"My parents were heartbroken. We had to leave him there.
"And we were all alone. There was no-one to share our grief. So my father said: 'That's it — enough. It's time for us to go.'"
The decision was made. The family would begin the long walk north towards the coast.
After many months they reached a cattle station about 400km north. And they began their new lives: new language, new food, new animals, a new way of seeing the world.
Merridoo's family were reunited with the other Martu people and desert families. But they all shared similar stories of death and loss.
So Merridoo finds it hard to understand why gudiya — white people — romanticise desert life, and why Robert Bogucki would have deliberately risked his life to go out there.
Merridoo feels a deep connection to the desert, but he knows the dangers. So he struggles to understand why men like Robert have romanticised this life. ( ABC News: Franque Batty )
He misses the desert, with its starry night nights and vast horizons. But he'd rather be where there is safe drinking water, and plentiful food, and medicine to give to children when they fall sick.
"It's like my father said — there is no going back. It's a one-way trip we do. We can never go back to how things were," he tells Robert, listening intently as the new friends sip tea by the hot coals of a campfire.
Merridoo organises a small ceremony out on the track, to try to right some of those wrongs from 26 years ago.
After a smoking ceremony, he instructs Robert to stand before him.
Robert stands tall, hands grasped behind his back, looking downward. He speaks gruffly.
After a smoking ceremony, Merridoo instructs Robert to stand before him. ( ABC News: Franque Batty )
After a moment of silence, Merridoo welcomes Robert back to the Great Sandy Desert. ( ABC News: Franque Batty )
"Thank you, my friend. For letting me walk though your yard, to learn the things I needed to learn," he tells the senior lawman.
"And thank you for coming to look for me — you and the other two trackers Mervyn and Peter.
"I will never forgot the knowledge I learnt on your country, and I will use it to the best of my ability."
After a moment of silence, Merridoo beckons Robert over and embraces him in a bear hug.
"Thank you my friend. Thank you for coming back and paying respects," he says.
"You are very welcome here, any time."
After a few days in the desert, Robert and Janet will head back to the log cabin where they live in remote central Alaska.
It's hard to imagine a place more different to the hot, arid interior of northern Western Australia — but there are subtle similarities.
Both places attract those looking to get away from people, regulation, and the claustrophobic expectations of modern society.
Both are tough landscapes to live in, where only those truly committed to isolation remain.
Robert Bogucki sits alongside the Aboriginal trackers who went searching for him decades ago. ( ABC News: Franque Batty )
Robert and Janet's forested block is not far from where another young white man made his own private quest in the wilderness.
Christopher McCandless, whose perilous journey was documented in the book Into the Wild, sparked similar questions of survival and solitude.
Why are some people compelled to gamble their one chance at life in search of spiritual enlightenment? And is it selfish or inspired to do so?
Robert is philosophical: everyone faces their own unique challenges in life, he says, and everyone will have to face death eventually. He just happened to do it at age 33, in the public spotlight.
Now 59, he still hasn't solved all of the questions that led him to the desert.
But for now, he's content among the men who spent those long days tracking his footprints in the sand.
Robert feels a deep connection with Merridoo and the Yulparija people. ( ABC News: Franque Batty )
For Peter Nyaparu Bumba and Mervyn Numbargardie, it's the first time they've seen Robert since they joined the search in 1999. ( ABC News: Franque Batty )
Janet remains humbled by the generosity of the strangers who helped search for Robert all those years ago. ( ABC News: Franque Batty )
The reunion has given both Robert and Merridoo a sense of closure — and a new beginning. ( ABC News: Franque Batty )
"It's strange, I really struggled to explain to people what I experienced in the desert," he reflects.
"But these guys get it straight away. It is such spiritual country, and I feel very grateful that I was protected and kept safe.
"There was unfinished business. It feels like coming full circle, but also establishing a new bond. It's like a new beginning."
Credits
Reporting and research: Erin Parke
Photography and videography: Andrew Seabourne, Franque Batty, Kenith Png, Andrew Williams, with additional imagery courtesy of AAP, West Australian Newspapers Limited and WA Police.
Editing and production: Lucy Sweeney
Nowhere Man is the latest season of the ABC's Expanse podcast, hosted on Yawuru-Djugan land by Erin Parke, with sound design and production by Grant Wolter, supervising producer Piia Wirsu and executive producer Edwina Farley.