When a bicycle is found abandoned on a remote track in the Great Sandy Desert it triggers an urgent search. Who is this mystery man and why has he walked into one of Australia’s deadliest landscapes?
There are tantalising clues but nothing’s adding up – until a cryptic postcard message delivers news that changes the search.
New episodes released each Wednesday.
Credits
Ben Martin: As soon as you step away from that highway you could be in the middle of nowhere.
There's no reference point. There's nothing on the horizon. There's nothing like that to tell you where you are other than the sun.
It's a huge horizon and you do feel like you could travel in one direction forever and never get there.
Erin Parke VO: It's 1999 and a young reporter, Ben Martin, is in the middle of the hot sand-dunes of the Great Sandy Desert in remote northern Australia.
Helping search for a man he's never met.
Ben Martin: There was one moment when we were out searching, and the team had started searching off into the bush and I was parked in our four-wheel drive and I fell asleep. And I had 10 minutes sleep and when I woke up, I couldn't see anyone. I couldn't see any other cars. I couldn't see anyone searching.
And I, all of a sudden, despite the fact I'm sitting in a $40,000 four-wheel drive with air conditioning and a satellite phone I felt completely alone. And, and I felt panicked. And I realised in that moment, like, I'm not cut out for this.
The fear of being alone and the fear of being isolated, it runs really deep.
And I just remember thinking, ‘I wonder if that's what he's feeling?’.
Erin Parke VO: Ben was searching for a mystery man who it seemed, unlike most missing people, didn’t want to be found.
Who’d 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.
Ben Martin: And not many people would put themselves through that experience because we are so conditioned to remaining comfortable.
I think there's a certain strength and power and self-resilience in being okay with being alone.
I'm not one of those people.
Erin Parke VO: Once, when I was a teenager, I had an experience that brought me close to death.
The details don't matter. The point is, that in that moment of realising death was imminent I was overwhelmed by an intense, panicky desire to live. And that's changed the way I see the world.
So, on a personal level, I struggle to understand why someone would put themselves in a situation of intense physical discomfort and even risk their life on purpose.
Was it to prove something to the world? Or prove something to himself?
Or is it that sometimes you actually need to feel close to death in order to be sure you want to live?
And when he was out there, did that mystery man find what he was looking for?
At a time when so many of us feel lost, what’s the most extreme thing we’d do to feel found?
My name is Erin Parke, and this is episode one of Expanse: Nowhere Man.
I've been a reporter in the tiny tropical town of Broome for almost twenty years.
It's an isolated dot on the northern coast of Australia - bordered by rugged, remote coastline to the north, and a vast empty desert to the south.
It's actually closer to Indonesia than any Australian capital city. In the wet season we're cut off by cyclone storms, and in the dry season we're engulfed by something even scarier - swarms of retirees in caravans, and fire-twirling backpackers.
Not long after I arrived I was working as a barmaid at the oldest pub in town, and one of the locals told me Broome was a 'sunny place full of shady characters'.
The phrase stuck with me, and it's one of the things that makes it a fascinating news patch.
It's just that some of the most interesting things happened before I got here.
Vanessa Mills: This is just one folder in a filing cabinet. Ah, it's a bit stuck.
Erin Parke VO: It's a lazy Friday afternoon in 2022, and I'm supposed to be writing an article about the impact of COVID-19 on house prices. But, it's dull and I'm bored and more interested in something that happened almost a quarter of a century ago.
Over the years I’ve heard snippets of the story from rusted-on locals. But the more I’ve looked into it, the stranger it seems.
So, I've made my colleague Vanessa trawl through her famously overflowing filing cabinet of archival documents.
Erin Parke: You've actually got the browning edges of the torn newspaper.
Vanessa Mills: So yes, the filing system is useful.
Erin Parke: Wait, I just saw my name!
It could be under like Outback Adventure or Survival.
Vanessa Mills: Yeah, it depends on...
Erin Parke: Could you have thrown it out?
Vanessa Mills: No, no. I can wash your mouth out! Throw a piece of history out?
Erin Parke VO: Vanessa’s searching for a case that became part of Australia’s outback mythology.
A ghost of a man, who disappeared into the desert and became famous against his will.
Vanessa Mills: And I think it must be under prominent people, Erin is where I've probably, probably filed it.
But look, no, here it is. Let's pull this out. Oh yeah, that's it.
Erin Parke: Oh my gosh.
Vanessa Mills: Oh, it's a newspaper. It's a big broad sheet newspaper.
The West Australian’s big weekend lift out. I loved the photograph, he was gaunt, slightly bewildered, very dishevelled.
Erin Parke: He's quite handsome, isn't he?
Vanessa Mills: Yeah...
Erin Parke VO: The article is from around the peak of the media frenzy that erupted around this man. A fierce public debate over whether his behaviour was selfish or inspired.
The search for him lasted weeks, and was expensive and dangerous. And it was plagued with questions about whether he'd gone into the desert on purpose.
Who would do that? Was he a nutter, or a visionary, or just a spoilt rich kid?
Vanessa Mills: How much more weird could this story get?
The story just kept growing and growing. Every little thread that started getting stitched into the fabric of the Bogucki story was even more glittery and sparkly and fascinating and quirky and extraordinary than the previous one.
Erin Parke VO: The by-line on the article we’re looking at is Ben Martin.
He's not working as a journalist anymore, but he is happy to meet up for a coffee.
Ben Martin: Knowing that I was coming to have a chat to you today I thought I better dig up what doesn't exist in my memories any longer, but exists in a box in my house. And, um, yeah, I found quite a bit actually.
Erin Parke VO: Ben is tall, and has a warm smile and observant eyes. He’s really chatty and he seems glad for an excuse to talk about this story
Ben Martin: And this is a scrapbook of every article that was put together during the entire search.
Erin Parke VO: In 1999, Ben was 24 years old and a newspaper cadet in Perth in Western Australia.
The country was gearing up for the Sydney Olympics, and living in fear of the Y2K bug, and scandalised by a new TV show called Sex and the City.
Ben Martin: The chief of staff, who was a fairly fearsome character, called me up to the desk one day and he said, ‘How would you like to go up north?’.
And by up north what he meant was covering the top half of Western Australia.
And so my fate was sealed, I was sent up north and straight into an adventure that would really change my life.
The first thing that struck me up there was how big the sky is. The sky is vast. The horizon, usually flat all the way around you, just stretches on forever.
You've got a sense up there that you are so remote that you could step 10 meters off a road and be somewhere where no one's ever stepped before.
Erin Parke VO: Ben was based in a town called Karratha, but one of his favourite places to chase stories was eight hours north, in Broome - with it's big beaches, eccentric locals and rowdy pubs.
Ben Martin: Broome in July is a, is a magical place. The temperature's great, the humidity's low, the beaches are good.
And as I was leaving to drive back to Karratha it was mentioned to me that a bicycle had been found on the edge of the Great Sandy Desert.
So, I thought I may as well go and stop in at the Sandfire Roadhouse on the way home and find out what's going on.
The Sandfire Roadhouse is a, is a funny little jumble of buildings and a petrol station in the middle of nowhere on the Great Northern Highway.
And I stopped in there, met a couple of police officers, we had a few drinks in the bar there, and the next day I was out searching with them.
Erin Parke: And so it all began.
Ben Martin: Exactly, and so it all began.
Erin Parke VO: Earlier that sunny Monday, back in Broome, a call had come through to the local police station
Ray Briggs: I was on afternoon shift. The call came through indicating that they had found the bicycle on the Pegasus Track, or just off the track, abandoned with camping gear, bedding, and an empty water bottle.
Erin Parke VO: Sergeant Ray Briggs was a cheeky young officer, known for his larrikin sense of humour and coaching local footy.
He was told the abandoned bicycle had been discovered by a group of bird-watchers while they were travelling down a really remote desert track.
Ray Briggs: They had left a note for whoever owned the bike. ‘Fellow traveller, only concerned for your safety. We have notified the police at Derby and Broome of your position. They may come and check. Kind regards, P. Knight’.
So they obviously had concerns for safety, you know.
Erin Parke: So this is a copy of the actual note that was left...
Ray Briggs: Yeah
Erin Parke: I gotta ask, are you meant to have this?
Ray Briggs: Oh, no, no, this is fine. Yeah. Yeah. This is fine.
Erin Parke VO: At that moment in July 1999, Ray had no idea the discovery of that bicycle, it would be the catalyst for one of the biggest land searches Australia had ever seen.
Ray Briggs: And then as a result of that, the conversation took place and they decided that, well, we better go and have a look.
Erin Parke VO: Two police officers are sent to the site and they film the strange scene.
The footage shows the flat, dry landscape, speckled with scrub. And tucked amidst the grey-green foliage is a shiny metal frame. A blue bicycle, in a place it shouldn't be.
And beside it, a small pile of belongings, including some men’s clothing and water bottles.
And, ominously, a handful of footprints are leading away from the bike.
Ray Briggs: My first reaction was, well that's a strange place to leave a push bike.
Erin Parke: So, at this point you don't know for sure that someone's missing the desert?
Ray Briggs: No, we don't. But I mean, you are already thinking that someone's missing because the fact is the bike’s 30kms into the bush.
Erin Parke VO: Ray’s boss is senior sergeant Geoff Fuller - a tall, easygoing country copper who’s been in Broome for about two years.
He knows that he has to act quickly. There could be a man wandering around the desert with no food and no water.
The bicycle and belongings are driven back to Broome where Geoff picks through the bits and pieces.
Geoff Fuller: Searching for anything which might give us an indication of, uh, who we were looking for. And there was nothing there.
We've found property before, but not in such an isolated location.
Erin Parke: So it sounds like there's sort of some red flags there?
Geoff Fuller: Absolutely, yeah. No, we were quite concerned.
Erin Parke VO: Was the person mentally ill and wandering around the desert? Were they injured? Had the met with foul play?
Geoff Fuller is a pretty calm and methodical person. The kind of person you’d want searching for you if you got lost.
He decides to start a land and air search the next day. If there is someone lost in the desert there will be a critical window to find them before heat stroke or dehydration kick in.
But it’s not going to be easy.
Geoff Fuller: Well, we need to get a team down there to follow the tracks. But, we don't know where we're heading, none of our fellas have been in there before, so we didn't know where we were going.
So, we were sort of flying by the seat of the pants a little bit.
Erin Parke VO: The track where the bike had been found was halfway between Broome and Port Hedland on Western Australia's coast - it's an area known as Cyclone Alley, because it's where big monsoonal storms slam the coast each year during the Wet Season.
And the bike had been dumped 35-kilometres inland. And most worryingly, the foot-tracks appeared to be heading inland... into the Great Sandy Desert.
Geoff knows it’s one of the emptiest and most deadly landscapes in Australia.
Geoff Fuller: It's just a very inhospitable place. In that area there, there is absolutely nothing. Even the aboriginal communities were only on the fringes of it.
It goes for a thousand kilometres across. And even when we're flying up there, I thought, ‘I wouldn't wanna land here because you become the search for me shortly, 'cause no one will know that I've come down’.
It's not a place you'd even want to visit. It's not on the tourist map.
Erin Parke: And what did that mean for, you know, coordinating the search?
Geoff Fuller: Uh, very challenging. Distance, time, lack of daylight hours, lack of fuel.
Erin Parke VO: So the morning after police visit the scene the search kicks off.
A team is assembled at the Sandfire Roadhouse. Police officers, in their khaki uniforms, and search and rescue volunteers in bright orange jumpsuits.
And tagging along is rookie reporter Ben MArtin.
Ben Martin: I remember the police saying, ‘Let's meet, we'll get breakfast at the Roadhouse in the morning’.
And I remember getting there and they were eating what they called the Big Splash.
And the Big Splash was this plate that was laden with every type of meat you could think of. There were chops, sausages, bacon, plus fried eggs, baked beans, toast, a big mug of tea.
And this is breakfast, mind you. I'm not used to eating like that, but that's what they were doing.
And then we all rolled out in convoy. Four or five cars we drove out, we turned off the highway, at a particular 44-gallon drum that was there that marked the spot. And we started driving through some scrub pretty quickly.
They had marked the location of where the bike had been found with surveyors tape and really that was our only signpost that that's where it was.
Erin Parke VO: I’ve covered a lot of police searches for missing people in this part of the world and it does seem like a strange scenario. This isn’t the kind of track where someone would go for a scenic bike ride.
The convoy presses on, following the footprints deeper into the desert.
Ben Martin: It was hot. I mean, we started early in the morning, but the heat comes on pretty quickly.
We would basically follow that track all the way through until we lost the footprints. Stop. Find 'em again. And off we’d go again.
We had constant radio communication between all the vehicles, saying what we could see, who was looking south, who was looking north, trying to make sure that we were covering 360 degrees around the convoy as it kind of snaked through the desert.
Erin Parke VO: We’re flicking through Ben’s old articles as we talk.
The newspaper photos show the convoy of Land Cruisers pushing up the track, with searchers scouring the sand for footprints in the late afternoon sun.
Ben Martin: I think there's a photo there of me as a young reporter with a satellite phone perched on some spinifex, trying to get a signal back to the newsroom to talk to them about whatever it was I was reporting on about the search on that day.
This is the first piece that I published was headlined ‘Search for a Bush Cyclist’.
Erin Parke: What were your thoughts about who this guy was and what he was doing?
Ben Martin: There were so many questions that we would ask ourselves.
I wonder what he's doing? Why would he be doing this? What could he possibly be thinking? Do you think he knows what he's doing? Do you think he knows what to expect out here? And of course there was always that nagging feeling that over the next sand dune you might find a body.
Erin Parke VO: The searchers had no idea who the man was. So it was like stalking a ghost.
A ghost that wore a men's raincoat and seemed to like eating noodles.
Ben Martin: I had nothing physical to go off other than the imprint of his foot in the sand.
The only clues that we were told was that there was an Asian male tourist who had gone missing near Bidyadanga aboriginal community.
How did we get a leap of faith to an Asian male tourist? Well, the clothing was male, and there were chopsticks and dried noodles in the pack,
And somehow there was a leap of faith there that this must mean that the tourist was from Asia. They couldn't be more incorrect.
Erin Parke VO: It seems like a bit of a stretch – that because there were noodles and chopsticks it must be an Asian man?
But hey, it was the nineties and the police were clinging to any clues they could find.
After a long, hot day the searchers pulled up stumps, returning reluctantly to the Sandfire Roadhouse for the night.
And back at the police station in Broome, Sergeant Ray Briggs is asked to take a closer look at the items found dumped with the bicycle.
Maybe there’s a driver’s license, or some other identification that’s been missed?
He lays the items out one by one on the back verandah.
Ray Briggs: It had a scrunched-up receipt in the bottom of the bloody raincoat of all places. And it had the name on it of R. Bogucki. It was from J. Boag and Son Hotel Division. It was dated the 18th of February.
So that receipt was what led to us being able to work out who he was. Then we contacted the Department of Immigration, right? And then they were able to provide who he was, Robert Joseph Bogucki. And he entered Australia on the 26th of November, 1998.
Erin Parke VO: The ghost had a name. Robert Bogucki.
Not, in fact, an Asian man. Just a person man who liked noodles. And he'd arrived in Australia from America with his girlfriend nine months earlier.
For policeman Geoff Fuller, it was a game-changer.
Geoff Fuller: Once you've got a name and we've got his date of birth, that was fantastic. We really then started to build a picture. It personalises the search quite a bit.
He’s born in 1966, you know, he’s only 33 years old. I've got a son, and you think, well, I wouldn't like my son to be wandering there without anyone looking for him properly. So, it gave a bit of a focus and a bit of motivation to try to find this fellow as quick as we can, and see what he's up to and that he's okay.
Erin Parke VO: Within hours, officers were working the phones. Trying to locate friends or family of this elusive Robert Bogucki, who could help make sense of his strange behaviour and help them narrow the search.
Meanwhile, around town, the news of the missing American was spreading fast.
Speculation was growing about where the man was and what on earth he was doing.
Ray Briggs: I had a lot of friends that were outside of the police, and I was coaching the footy and that. So, you know, I got asked all the time, ‘How's it going?’.
You got the odd comment, which you always got, ‘Oh, he's bloody mad going out there’. You know, ‘Why would you be going out there? There's nothing out there’.
Erin Parke: So it was the talk of the town?
Ray Briggs: Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah. You know, it's a pretty... what's the word I suppose you'd use?
Erin Parke: Sensational?
Ray Briggs: Well, yeah, and, and, and a little bit romanticised, I suppose.
You've got this American guy who's gone out into the desert, you know, and for people that don't know it is desert. It's bloody isolated. You know, one of the last wilderness in Australia.
Erin Parke VO: Police knew they didn’t have long if they were to find Robert Bogucki alive.
Experts were telling them that if he didn't have food and water, and if he was walking on foot he’d probably die of heat stroke or dehydration within a week.
And it had already been 5 days since his bicycle had been found.
And then came news that made them rethink everything.
Erin Parke: I’ve managed to get hold of a copy of the police records of the search.
It’s about twenty pages of dense text and it outlines pretty much every twist and turn of how things played out.
And you can see here on the 31st July, police managed to get hold of the parents of Robert Bogucki.
So they were living in Los Angeles in a pretty wealthy suburb there, and were actually able to speak to his parents on the telephone.
Geoff Fuller: They then provided very important information for us on the profile of their son. That he's a fit and adventurous person who's employed as a fireman and a paramedic. He's six foot tall. Good build.
Erin Parke VO: And the anxious parents revealed that they'd actually received a cryptic, message from their son, written in the moments before he headed into the desert.
Geoff Fuller: He'd sent a postcard from the Sandfire Roadhouse to his mother in California, stating that he was at the Sandfire and was going to ride his bike along a track just north of the Roadhouse and travel to Fitzroy Crossing.
She received the postcard on the 20th of July. Now that was a significant date for us, because he was two weeks in front of us.
He had gone into the desert two weeks before we'd known he was missing. We might not be making any ground on him at all.
Erin Parke VO: The postcard message was brief, stating that Robert intended to cycle across the Great Sandy Desert, and wouldn’t be in touch for a while.
It was alarming news. The American had embarked on a 500 kilometre journey across one of the most unforgiving landscapes in Australia.
And he’d already been out there for almost three weeks, much longer than those experts reckoned a person could survive.
If Robert Bogucki was still alive, he needed to be found urgently.
Back at the Broome police station, Sergeant Ray Briggs was baffled.
Ray Briggs: You got to remember that 99% of people when they go lost are wanting to be found. People get lost because they don't know where they are.
When you're searching for people that are lost, they will walk a certain distance and then they will start to go round in circles. Whereas with him,he was going somewhere. He didn't want to be found.
From the police point of view, that makes it harder to find someone.
Erin Parke VO: Police boss Geoff Fuller digested the new information.
It was strange behaviour, but it didn't alter his determination to try to bring the missing American out alive.
Even if Robert Bogucki needed to be saved from himself.
Erin Parke: Can you remember what your thoughts were finding out that he'd actually deliberately walked into the desert?
Geoff Fuller: He had a plan in place. It wasn't going to work, but, hell that's what we are there for. We’re there to help him. I wasn't going to walk with him, but I'm quite happy to go and grab him and bring him back out.
He was out there and we just wanted to find him and bring him home safe to his mum and dad.
Erin Parke VO: The Bogucki family had provided police with a single photograph of 33-year-old Robert.
I've spent a lot of time staring at this photo.
He's is sitting outside wearing a casual T-shirt and squinting in the sunshine. He has dark hair. He’s got a healthy, muscular build. His expression’s hard to read.
There are no obvious clues as to why this nice-looking man, described as intelligent and determined, would do something so recklessly risky as walk out into a desert in a foreign country.
But the police log reveals a tantalising lead.
A week into the search for Robert Bogucki.. they got a phone call from some Australians who met the American not long before he vanished.
Tim and Wendy Geoghegan agree to have a yarn via a video call from their home near Canberra.
Wendy Geoghegan: Way back in the day when the internet was first invented, we got a computer and we got this cyclist magazine and in it there was a teeny weeny little ad from a J. North.
After three emails, it turned out they were going to be here around Christmas time. So I said, ‘Well, look, if you've got nowhere to be for Christmas, come to us’.
Erin Parke VO: This was back in 1998, so almost a year before Robert goes missing. That ‘J. North’ was Robert Bogucki’s girlfriend Janet, and the couple were headed to Australia.
Tim Geoghegan: First impression, he could drink. Jesus Christ.
Wendy Geoghegan: We had this huge Christmas party in the backyard and he was pickled, well, he was quietly pickled.
Erin Parke VO: The Americans were relaxed and on holidays and great company
The two couples hit it off straight away.
Wendy Geoghegan: Janet was this wonderful, outgoing, really funny, call the spade a spade. And Robert’s this gentle, calm, quiet, really thoughtful...
Erin Parke: Did you get a sense that Robert had a lot on his mind? Were there any signs of, kind of, what was to come?
Wendy Geoghegan: Not of what was to come. It was very obvious Robert was a deep thinker, you know. He's a highly intelligent guy and he really thinks things through.
Robert's definitely not a people pleaser. He will do what he thinks needs to be done.
Erin Parke VO: One of the things the new friends bonded over was their love of adventure. They enjoyed pushing their bodies to their limits and going into really remote landscapes. Accepting a level of risk that I don’t think I’d be comfortable with.
Wendy Geoghan: The kind of people that are attracted to those environments don't always play by everybody else's nice, safe little rules.
Most people, they see that risk and they can't cope. They can't comprehend it. You know, why would you do that?
And I think we've lost the ability to accept risk.
There's no comprehension of adventure or challenge or the need to push yourself to really find out what my limits are.
Erin Parke VO: Robert and Janet ended up staying for a month.
Wendy Geoghan: I think it was New Year's Day that we drove them out into Namadji and set them free into the wilderness.
Erin Parke VO: It would be seven months later that Tim and Wendy heard the surprising news. Robert Bogucki was missing.
Tim Geoghegan: When they first found his bicycle in the desert, the police rang me, I think it was from Broome. They said, ‘Oh, we're looking about a 20 kilometre radius from his bicycle’.
I said, ‘Mate, you'd want to be looking at more like 150k radius from his bicycle. That's what I would do’.
Wendy Geoghegan: And the cops are like, ‘Oh, yeah, stupid Sepo got himself lost out there, you know, blah, blah, blah...’
A lot of people underestimated Robert.
Erin Parke VO: I feel like the pieces don't quite add up when it comes to Robert Bogucki.
As humans we like to be able to categorise people, condense their character into a summery line.
A tagline of sorts, like on reality TV shows where someone might be described as 'a young teacher from Tasmania' or an 'outdoorsy tradie from Sydney'.
Or, a ‘fit firefighter from Alaska’.
But I'm struggling to do this with Robert. There are too many contradictions.
Tim and Wendy describe a relaxed, gregarious traveller who likes to sink beer. But his actions suggest someone who's scarily single-minded and stubborn. Who parted ways with his loyal and loving girlfriend to set off alone into a harsh landscape on the other side of the world.
The more I hear about, the more questions I have.
And what I’ve found out so far... isn’t even the half of it.
The discovery of Robert Bogucki’s bicycle and belongings stashed under a bush in one of the most isolated corners of the continent would set in motion a bizarre sequence of events that would put lives at risk, and reveal dark secrets of the Great Sandy Desert more than a quarter of a century later.
Archive: What he did was quite reckless.
Janet North: I knew he couldn't be content with living a life unless he did this.
Ben Martin: It stepped outside the bounds of socially responsible behaviour.
Archive: It’s one of the most extensive searches ever mounted in the Great Sandy Desert.
Lindsay Greatorex: They’ll be looking for a body.
Erin Parke VO: I'm Erin Parke, host and producer. Grant Wolter is on sound design and production. Piia Wirsu is supervising producer, and Edwina Farley is Executive Producer.
This podcast was recorded on Yawuru land.
Thank you so much for listening.