Ricky Megee (born 1970/1971) is an Australian, most notable for having been stranded in the Outback and surviving for 71 days in 2006. Megee later gave contradictory statements as to how he came to be stranded crossing the Northern Territory and Western Australia. On one occasion he said that his car broke down, and on another that he had been carjacked by an armed gang. However, a doctor later confirmed that Megee's appearance was consistent with having lived in extreme conditions. Like most deserts, the Tanami can reach during the day but still be very cold at night. Megee made his own primitive shelters and survived by drinking rainwater and eating small animals and available vegetation for nourishment. He was eventually discovered by a group of station hands near Katherine, Northern Territory, and taken to Darwin for medical assistance. Although some doubts were later raised as to the exact chain of events as Megee related them, the police did not find evidence that a criminal offence had occurred.
Early life
Ricky Megee was born in 1970 or 1971 in Gippsland, Victoria; he later described his childhood as a happy one, until the family moved to Melbourne, where his father later killed himself. Megee worked at a variety of jobs. He was, variously, a carpet salesman, prawn fisherman, nightclub doorman, and an electrician. He eventually became a bailiff. Eventually, he went to jail after being involved in a fight in Perth, as well as for drug offences. In 2006 he was 35 years old and living in Queensland.
Journey to Port Hedland and attack
In January 2006 Megee had been offered work in a government department in Port Hedland, Western Australia. He accepted the job, and set off on the long drive, which he had made multiple times before. Driving a 2001 Mitsubishi Challenger he took the Buntine Highway, which for much of his journey was a desert track across the outback of the Northern Territory.
The events leading to Megee being stranded are somewhat confused, and indeed, Megee's version of how events unfolded changed significantly over time. He first told his rescuers that his car had broken down, but then, The Washington Post reported, he claimed "that he had been drugged by hitchhikers and left for dead". Megee later elaborated on how this scenario unfolded, saying he had picked up a lone Aboriginal hitchhiker between the towns of Kalkaringi and Halls Creek. He believed that at some point the hitchhiker drugged Megee's drink. Megee said that although he normally always opened his own drinks from the car refrigerator, on this occasion he allowed his passenger to open one for him.
Later, in his 2010 autobiography, Megee said that there had been three men sitting on the roadside, who had run out of petrol, and that he had offered to give one of them a lift to a petrol station. Megee also posited that he could have been stabbed with a drugged-syringe during a struggle. Either way, Megee later recalled feeling increasingly "dazed and confused", and then blacked out before he recovered consciousness hours later. He also said that his attackers did not leave him immediately: they over-powered and stunned him. He later awoke in their camp. They had a gun, wrote Megee, but never used it; they did bring him water. After an unknown period, the carjackers lifted camp and disappeared. Before they left, they stole his shoes, but left him with $12.30 which had been in his pocket.
When he regained consciousness, he said, he was in a hole, covered in black plastic, which had had "some rocks and dirt thrown on top". Megee suggested that it was only the attempts by four dingoes to claw him that woke him up.
Journey across the desert
Megee walked for ten days through the northeastern fringe of the Tanami Desert. He often lost consciousness through heat exhaustion, as temperatures regularly went above . According to Mark Clifford, a local man who later witnessed Megee's arrival, although the temperatures were high, it was also the middle of the wet season during the time, which was in Megee's favour. When combined with the abundance of small wild animals and Megee's "hardy constitution", his chances of survival were, with hindsight, actually relatively good. However, it was never clearly established precisely how Megee became as lost as he did.
Megee said that he survived by eating leeches, insects, snakes, ants and lizards, and edible plants. He drank water from "various dams and waterholes" and scavenged in the bush every evening, eating "only one meal a day, just enough to stay alive". When water was unavailable, he drank his urine after chilling it to suppress the flavour.