Surviving desert hell

71 days lost in the outback

Ricky Megee was drugged, robbed, and left for dead in Australia’s deserted Northern Territories. From this savage attack comes a story of survival so incredible that Megee has spent years protesting its truth in the face of disbelieving critics. Megee spent 71 days in the harshest outback conditions without anything but the clothes he was standing in, losing nearly 6 stone in a desperate struggle for life. Wandering for weeks, he eventually found a remote waterhole where he spent the remainder of his time until rescue came. Baked in the day and frozen at night, plagued by hunger and mosquitoes: here, Ricky tells WideWorld about conditions at his makeshift camp and the tucker that he had to eat, or die.

It was proving hard to get a balanced diet relying entirely on what nature could provide. It was feast or famine, depending on the state of the surrounding environment.

Meat of any description was the substance I craved; I was prepared to do whatever was required. But without that opportunity of a carnivorous feast always available to me, I sure ate a lot of vegetation. Edible plants didn't stand a chance with me around.

The mozzies were not to escape the menu either. With so many swarms to contend with, it seemed my only hope in the impending madness. I looked down under a bright February moon to see my arms and legs completely covered in thousands of mozzies. Each one was fighting for a spot on my quickly disappearing skin.

It didn’t mater how many of them I bludgeoned, all I managed was to cover myself in more blood and mozzie bites for the victim’s relatives to feast on.

I did eat a couple of mozzies. They tasted like flies – which was okay to me – but I started to dwell on the possibility of contracting Ross River fever. How fucked would that be? They were bad enough biting me; I reckoned I shouldn’t be eating them at all.

Crunchy crickets

Little bugs offered a glimmer of hope, so I gave them a try. Then the crickets turned up and I sacrificed as many of them as I could fit in my mouth.

Crickets were the first really crunchy things that I tried, but definitely not the last. They made a nice change from the softness of the mushy vegetation I’d become accustomed to. Being so small and crunchy, all the unlucky munchkins I could grab hold of I swallowed whole. I pulled off their heads and chewed the rest down as fast as I could, so I didn't have to dwell on what I was actually eating.

Grasshoppers were pretty crunchy as well. I didn’t really appreciate the sensation of the legs and wings tickling the insides of my cheeks – they were too spindly for my liking. To counter that, I pulled off their limbs and just ate the body, which made them more palatable.

Both insects twisted around plenty if I didn’t swallow fast. They never went out without a struggle, but the end result was always the same. To me the crickets and grasshoppers were dead once I pulled their heads off, but they weren’t so easily convinced. They wriggled around in my mouth until my teeth crushed their brittle bodies into bite-sized pieces.

The sweetest tucker

Having a crack at any type of food that didn’t look or smell like it could kill me had become my motto for survival. Leeches were one of those creatures I didn’t expect to go down so smooth. I’d eat one of them again any day, and track down his mates for seconds. For anyone who hasn't tried leeches, they are some of the sweetest tucker you’re ever likely to find when lost in the outback. I’d heartily recommend them, as long as you learn how to chew fast.

I couldn't picture running out of food, or losing more than half my body weight. I certainly never considered that after twenty-odd days already spent wandering the desert I’d have to wait another seven weeks to be found. In many respects my fight for survival had in fact only just begun.

No matter how painstakingly I built the mud walls of my shelter, they couldn’t stop the rain from penetrating in a good downpour. That familiar pitter-patter could be bittersweet. It meant the vegetation would be big and juicy the next morning, but when a big storm did hit I could forget about going to sleep. If it really pissed down, I’d have to spend the next few hours sweating on my hands and knees trying to shore up the foundations from the inside.

It would start with a splatter, then a ball of mud falling on my face, and then my while fucking house would start to fall in on top of me. Unless I madly slapped the dripping mud back against the walls to support the star pickets that acted as foundations, I would be wearing a disaster. My walls would come crashing down around my ears and I'd be back out in the elements gathering more mud to make hasty home renovations in the darkness.

One big chunk all but concussed me one night after it hit me square on the forehead while I was enjoying a deep slumber. It felt like a rock.

Dwindling supplies

My energy levels were depleting and so were my food sources. When I first arrived I could catch six to eight big frogs a day without too much trouble. But by about my third week at the dam, I could only manage two or three smaller ones. And it took a lot more time and effort for this petty harvest.

I thought I must have eaten all the parents and was quickly gobbling up all the baby froggies. In the hope of getting their numbers up I gave the frogs a rest for a while. I stuck to grasshoppers and my bush tucker vegetarian diet.

Unfortunately, the leeches also appeared to have left the building. My ravenous appetite for dining on those delicacies again appeared to have all but eliminated them from the menu as well.

A fair proportion of my survival could be explained by my own mindset. If I complained about anything, I'd get stuff-all the next day, when suddenly the frogs and leeches wouldn’t want to know about me. But if I praised God for giving me nothing, then all the luck seemed to come my way the next morning. It was that much easier to catch the slippery frogs and the leeches that stuck to my tongue tasted more nourishing.

My only friend

About the only thing to cheer me up out there was a visit from the one friend I made in the desert. Unfortunately, he wasn’t human and had no prospects of getting me out of there alive. But the companionship of a one-eyed dingo can never be underestimated.

He was like a pet dog, except he was wild. I also couldn’t feed him much because I was slowly starving to death myself.

I was a bit sceptical when he first arrived on the scene, as he was very flighty around me. But then I had a closer look at him and understood why. His right eye showed obvious signs he’d been on the losing end of a fair old fight, which had claimed his sight.

But not even the friendship of old Bung-Eye would be enough to fend off reality. Food was what I needed most, and it was drying up as rapidly as my dam was depleting from the lack of rain. As the weeks wore on and the paddock dried up, even the insects dried up too.

The final sacrifice

Food, water, shelter. These were my basic requirements to survive and I seemed to have them all covered to start with. Yet as the days wore on and I wore out, I had to look around for eating alternatives that didn’t require expending so much valuable energy.

But even I had a breaking point. My next new victim will be remembered as without a doubt the most disgusting pile of shit that ever passed my lips. It almost tipped me over the edge of resilience.

Over the previous few weeks, I’d observed the odd cockroach invade my humpy. They mostly landed at night as I was trying to catch some sleep. I decided that on the off chance they actually tasted half decent, it was worth the risk to try and digest one.

What if, for whatever gross reason, they were edible? I wouldn’t have to waste so much energy walking for miles to collect food. There were enough cockroaches sneaking around to fill my snack quota for weeks. How bad could they really be?

The ones crawling through my space were big buggers, that was for sure. Measuring a good few centimetres long and half as thick, they seemed to be moving into the neighbourhood without any invitation. It didn't seem to matter whether I liked how they tasted or not.

Determined to go through with my sickening experiment, I stuck my hand out and grabbed one of the filthy bastards. With my hands firmly clasped around him, I hesitated over whether to eat the head or the bum first. I wasn’t sure where to begin with such a vile creature.

Deciding in the end that it didn’t really matter, I brought him close to my face to look him square in the eyes. Then I cancelled his passport to life.

Just bringing that putrid, disgusting thing near my mouth created a smell strong enough to make me want to spew. But there was still the remote possibility they tasted like peaches – I had to go through with it.

My resistance to toxic tastes was pretty high by that stage. I ignored the stench and shoved him head first into my hungry mouth.

I’m not sure if it was the stomach-churning taste of the smell that got me in the end. However, the result was putrid enough to have me hurling uncontrollably out of the end of my shelter within two seconds. I didn’t even manage to chew on him in the end – he was spat out before he sucked his last breath.

That taste was enough to contaminate my mouth with his filth for at least a few days. Even seeing one of those awful creatures crawling around after that made me feel a bit sick in the guts. They are without doubt the epitome of all things disgusting.

To order Ricky Megee's book Left for Dead in the Outback, visit www.rickymegee.com