A group of friends found themselves lost in the Australian desert with minimal supplies after ignoring what they assumed was an out-of-date road sign.
Brendan Cook, his partner Mel and two friends, Matt and another Mel, decided to travel the famously remote Birdsville Track one summer.
The outback route crosses arid country with only a handful of places to refuel and buy supplies along the way, and it is possible to travel for days without encountering another car.
They planned a weekend of hiking and camping, taking in the dramatic scenery and spotting feral camels, kangaroos and cockatoos.
But on the way home, they became stranded in the Australian bush with minimal food and water – and no cellphone signal.
‘The experience reminded me how quickly circumstances can change and how dependent we all are on other people,’ Brendan says. ‘It was just a really rough place to be.’
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They were on the final leg of their journey back, around six hours from the nearest town Roxby Downs, when they turned off the main road and onto a small track leading down to a creek.
They ignored a ‘road closed’ sign as they headed towards the floodplain, assuming it was old and no longer applied.
That night, they decided to go on a ‘spotlighting’ mission, looking for wildlife using the car’s headlights. That was when they got stuck.
When the wheels started spinning in the thick, sticky silt, they abandoned the car and returned to camp, planning to free it in the morning light.
The next morning, they discovered the car had sunk up to its axles.
‘The mud there was quite hard on top from the baking sun. But as soon as you cracked the surface, the silt below it was really thick and horribly saline, disgusting, stinky and sticky. The more we moved the car, the more we dug, the more mess that became of it,’ Brendan told BBC podcast Stranded in the Outback: Stuck Fast in Mud.
They spent the entire day in 45-degree heat trying to free the car, without success. By the end of it, they were hot, covered in mud, hungry and increasingly worried about their water supply.
‘We were reasonably prepared for a remote outback trip, but certainly not for being stranded for an extended period,’ Brendan remembers. ‘We had a limited supply of food and water in the vehicle.
‘From quite early on we realised we needed to be careful about consumption and make decisions with the possibility of a much longer wait in mind.’
The following day, they used their tool kits to dismantle a barge, taking rusty poles and pieces of scrap metal to place in front of the tyres for traction. The conditions were gruelling.
‘There were moments that the flies were that bad that we had to wear a mesh hood. They were those really small flies that are trying to get into your body, through the eye sockets, through the nose. It’s disgusting, uncomfortable and relentless.’
While the men worked, the women trekked miles to a water tank, only to discover it was empty. They then dug a hole to collect the hyper-saline water and tried boiling it, but it wasn’t enough to keep them hydrated.
Meanwhile, the mud caked onto their bodies and baked onto their skin. When they tried to rub it off with towels, it ripped at their skin.
By the second day, they had run out of clean water. All that remained to eat were apples and muesli bars.
They hoped that when they failed to turn up for work, someone would raise the alarm. In the meantime, there was no cellphone service and with the main road 12 miles away, there was little chance of a car passing.
‘By that point, the stress had set in. The conversation moved from enjoying each other’s company to being about survival. The things we needed to do to preserve ourselves and the critical decisions we needed to make to get ourselves out of there,’ Brendan says.
‘There were moments when the seriousness of the situation became very real. I wouldn’t say we ever panicked, but we became very conscious that poor decisions could have serious consequences.
‘Our focus was on staying calm, conserving energy, thinking logically and working through one problem at a time. The thought of not making it did cross our minds but we didn’t talk about it openly.’
So, on their fourth night in the bush, they decided to leave the car, going against one of the fundamental rules of outback survival.
‘One of the biggest messages when you are in the outback, is never leave your car. If there’s a search mission for you, most people that are found dead in the outback are not near their car.
‘The message is that if we know you’re lost, we’ll look for you from the sky from a small aircraft and find your car. We won’t find you in the outback.’
But they had no choice, so the group spit up. Matt and Mel stayed with the vehicle while keen walkers Brendan and Mel waited out the worst of the heat before setting off on foot towards the road at nightfall.
‘We heard dingoes all night. It’s terrifying to have dingoes near you, howling and following you. The outback is an intimidating place. You’re walking out of a stressful situation, through a stressful situation, into the unknown. I remember that feeling of – are we going to make this walk?’
They tried to keep each other’s spirits up by imagining the food and drink their rescuers might have waiting in their cars.
The following morning they saw their first car in five days. They were overjoyed and assuming the driver would stop, they watched it slow down, look at them, and speed away.
They were incredulous. They hadn’t realised that other travellers might be scared of them.
Exhausted from the walk and dehydrated, the couple gathered tree branches and an old sign and built a structure across the road in the hope of making the next driver stop.
Hours later, another car arrived, driven by a couple from Sydney. Desperate, Brendan and Mel begged for a lift, but the couple initially refused. They didn’t trust the dirty, haggard strangers standing by the roadside.
After negotiations, the drivers agreed to go and find Matt and Mel at the bogged car before returning. They handed Brendan and his companion some bottles of water and left them beside the road.
Hours later, they heard the sound of two cars approaching. Not only had the couple found their friends, they had helped tow out the car.
‘The sense of relief, joy and celebration… They realised we were good people. They shared some food and water and we sat by the road and joked and laughed.
‘We’re incredibly grateful to that couple. Without the willingness of others to stop, help and share their expertise, the outcome could have been very different,” Brendan says.
When they returned to civilisation, they headed straight for the nearest bar, where they ate, had a few drinks and regaled the bartender with their extraordinary survival story before heading back.
But despite having been stranded in the outback for days, when the four returned home, nobody had realised they were missing.
‘That was a surprising moment. You tend to assume that if something goes wrong, someone will notice fairly quickly. It was a reminder that in remote environments you can’t rely on others knowing where you are or when to expect you back.’
Brendan and Mel have since married and moved to New Zealand, where Brendan is Chief Executive of Nelson Airport. The couple are now much more careful when they go camping with their two sons.
Despite the frightening experience, Brendan hasn’t been put off outdoor adventure. But he does change the way he prepares for trips into the wilderness.
He adds: ‘The lesson I learned from the desert experience however has remained a constant today. I always leave the house prepared, carrying a little extra food and ensuring my comms equipment is in good working order.’