After years obsessing over the case, Erin Parke has made contact with the elusive and enigmatic Robert Bogucki.
She’s soon on a plane to Alaska, with a million questions for him. But will he agree to an interview? The clock is ticking...
Credits
Erin Parke: Hello? Hello. Hopefully this is recording okay.
Erin Parke VO: I've embarked on some pretty harebrained schemes in my time, but this one is right up there.
I almost feel a bit like, going on a first date
Erin Parke VO: After months of emailing, Robert Bogucki -the man, the myth, the desert survivor - has invited me to stay with him in Alaska.
Erin Parke: Like I want to make a good first impression without seeming like I'm trying too hard, or care too much. You know? That old feeling.
But you know what? I will not die wondering.
Erin Parke VO: I want to know why he walked into the Great Sandy Desert alone, surviving for more than 40 days and 40 nights. And what he found out when he pushed himself so close to death.
I just have to fly to the other side of the world to do so. And I'm not even 100% sure he'll actually give me an interview there.
Welcome to episode 4 of Expanse: Nowhere Man.
After almost three days of connecting flights, a fog of time zones and countless hours of the kind of bad reality TV shows you only watch long-haul flights, I arrive bleary-eyed in Fairbanks, Alaska.
Erin Parke: It's drizzling with rain and it's very cloudy and overcast. I can see the silhouette of a mountain range not too far away.
Erin Parke VO: Alaska’s so far north, that there’s daylight for more than twenty hours of the day at this time of year. So, even though it’s 9pm, its still bright and that feels eerie and disorientating.
Erin Parke: Are normal taxis down here?
Passer-by: There's a taxi right there, but it's more money.
Erin Parke: All right, thank you. I'll have a think.
I’m so excited.
Erin Parke VO: I haven't been here long, but this place, interior Alaska, it already feels strange. The non-stop sunlight and the cold, prickly air, the snow-peaked mountain ranges towering so high, they make small smattering of city buildings - and it's people - feel insignificant.
It feels important that this is where Robert Bogucki has chosen to live.
And it also feels strangely familiar.
Erin Parke: Hello, good, sir. Tell me where are we travelling? Where are we now?
Taxi driver Jesse: We're in Fairbanks, Alaska.
Erin Parke VO: My taxi driver Jesse tells me it's a tough place to live. The temperature gets down to minus-forty degrees in the winter.
And he reckons a lot of people move to Alaksa get away from people. To live off the grid, in the wilderness.
Taxi driver Jesse: I wasn't living the life I wanted. I was living the life that everybody else wanted me to live. And when I came to Alaska, that totally just changed and I decided I was gonna stay here.
Erin Parke VO: And then it clicks.
In a lot of ways it feels like a colder, snowier version of remote northern Australia. A place so isolated and difficult to live that most people are scared away.
Robert Bogucki walked into the Great Sandy Desert for a reason.
Maybe it's the same reason he moved to remote Alaska.
Taxi driver Jesse: Alaska is a perfect place to run away to, if you're seeking peace or you're just seeking distance from your former life.
Erin Parke VO: We pull up at a car park outside the local museum.
Erin Parke: I'll grab out of the boot. Thanks. Bye.
Erin Parke VO: Robert and Janet are due any minute.
I’ve met them a couple of times during their visits to Western Australia, but it feels like more pressure this time, coming all of this way to stay with them.
Before I've had time to compose myself, or prepare what I'm going to say a yellow four-wheel-drive flecked with mud swings into the car park.
And there he is. Robert Bogucki. The man I’ve been so curious about for so long.
He’s wearing a thick padded winter jacket and striding over to greet me with a polite smile.
But I soon realise.. this isn’t going to be easy.
The reason you’re not hearing this is because Robert and Janet aren’t keen for me to record anything. I ask politely, I cajole, but they’re firm - I am very welcome, but my microphone is not.
So I do what any self-respecting podcaster would do – I go into the toilet and get my microphone out there.
Erin Parke: So, I've just met Robert and Janet. Robert seems, like, a little stand-offish - that’s fair enough.
Janet is doing most of the talking, she seems a lot more gregarious and has got a big, like, cackle of a laugh. So yeah. I'm going to head back out now.
Erin Parke VO: I pile into the back seat of their car and we're soon driving clear of the strip malls and suburbia, climbing higher into a small mountain range, into a cold mist that sits across the peaks.
Forty minutes later we're there, pulling up at a large log cabin perched on a ridge that overlooks the most beautiful forested valley I've ever seen.
Robert and Janet show to me the guest cabin and leave me there with a small canister of bear spray for good luck.
Janet North: This will get it nice and warm and then we'll run you through another fire this evening.
Erin Parke: Yeah.
Janet North: That's probably enough.
Erin Parke VO: Robert and Janet head back to the main house, about 50 metres away, to let me settle in.
Erin Parke: Everything here, they built themselves. And this little guest cabin is so cute. And it's so quiet.
It's making me realise that I'm so used to having traffic noise or listening to podcasts nonstop, that the quiet’s actually making my ears feel like they're ringing a bit.
Erin Parke VO: It kind of feels like the set of a movie.
Something between Little House on the Prairie and The Shining.
And it turns out there are some unglamorous parts of being ‘off the grid’.
Erin Parke: Yep, that's the sound of a wee bucket being emptied.
It's quite something emptying a wee bucket in this beautiful picturesque location. Ugh.
Erin Parke VO: There is an outside toilet, but turns out the wee bucket is handy for avoiding bear attack when you need to go to the loo at night. So, the bear spray isn’t just a prop, it's an actual thing.
That night a lot of questions are running through my mind. The main one? After coming all of this way, what if Robert won’t actually agree to do an interview?
I finally drift off to sleep, under three big blankets, amid the sound of nothing.
Erin Parke: It's about seven o'clock in the morning, I haven't had any coffee yet.
Oh, Robert's just come outside, I can see him at the house. Alright, I'm going to say good morning to Robert.
Erin Parke VO: It's like a cat and mouse game. Me trying to get to know Robert, and Robert keeping me at a polite arm's length.
Erin Parke: Morning! How you doing?
He's such an interesting guy. I find him very hard to read. He's very smart, you can tell, but he doesn't let it all hang out. Like it's hard to read what he is thinking. I think he does like me. I think he's just reserved. And is also a little wary of the fact that I've got two microphones with me at most times.
All right, time to go on today's outing.
Erin Parke VO: They may not be keen on being interviewed, but Robert and Janet have offered me a schedule of activities, quintessential Alaskan activities, involving animals and guns and baking.
I feel like I'm being tested before I’ll be allowed to turn the microphone on.
Day one, we go for a dip in a natural hot spring, where large Russian men pad around in damp slippers and not much else.
Day two, blueberry picking. I trail around after Robert in the cool sunshine, as we quietly harvest berries until our wicker basket's bulging.
We chat. About Alaska, and his childhood in California, and Robert drops the occasional reference to what happened in the desert in 1999.
It’s fascinating but also really frustrating, because I’m dying to get the microphone out, but I also don’t want to be pushy, or spook Robert.
I feel like I won’t be able to live with myself if I return to Australia without his story properly recorded.
The next day Robert offers to take me shooting
Erin Parke: So Robert's gone to get a target and we're going to shoot from up here on the deck.
We’re not going to shoot he bunny are we? No. No fun shooting a bunny.
Hello, goodbye.
Okay, so the bullets in there but we're on safety...
Erin Parke VO: Soon I'm clutching a 22-calibre rifle, trying not to accidentally shoot Robert Bogucki.
That would be... awkward.
(gunshot)
The day ends with no unexpected fatalities and we eat blueberry muffins, fresh the oven, baked with the berries we collected from the valley below.
I feel like I could get used to this lifestyle. It feels... wholesome. And there’s no internet to remind me what I may or may not be missing out on.
If only I could enjoy it without the crippling anxiety that I still haven’t got any audio of Robert Bogucki or Janet recorded on this trip.
We seem to be enjoying each other company. There's lots of laughter and fun chats, but I’m starting to suspect that they’re not keen on sitting down for interviews.
Could this be the most expensive and futile overseas holiday I’ve ever been on?
Erin Parke: It's my final day staying out here with Robert and Janet. I am just a bit stressed about whether they're actually going to sit down with me and open up.
I am just making coffee by the way.
And at the moment I don't really know anything more than what I did when I arrived. I am running out of time. Wish me luck.
Erin Parke VO: Things get off to a good start.
Robert is in a relaxed mood and he gives me the nod to turn my microphone on as we tramp around the yard, trying to find a large animal he's heard barging around the veggie patch.
Erin Parke: I really don't know how I started off in the desert in northern Australia looking into this, and now I'm in bloody Alaska looking for a porcupine.
Are they dangerous?
There's something big bouncing around there.
Oh my god. Oh my God. Oh my gosh.
Robert Bogucki: (chuckle) Yeah, he was big. He got up pretty close.
Erin Parke: (laugh)
Erin Parke VO: After the excitement of seeing an animal that was thankfully not a bear, we spend the afternoon swigging cold Alaskan beer and sifting through old photographs.
It’s our last night together and I’m still waiting for a sign that I might have passed this unspoken test and Robert and Janet might be ready to be interviewed.
But, praise be, Robert finally makes his offer.
Would I like to do an interview first thing tomorrow morning.
I'll only have a window of a couple of hours before I'm scheduled to fly out, but he says I can ask him anything I want.
Erin Parke: All right, so I need my notebook, my phone.
Erin Parke VO: Early morning, I head up the hillside to meet Robert.
Looking out across the forest-green valley, I’m reminded how close we are to where another, more famous young man also went into the wilderness.
You’ve probably seen the movie or read the book Into The Wild, about a guy called Christopher McCandless, who was determined to live off the land in the wilds of Alaska, but ended up dying, alone and starving.
I've always been struck by the parallels between Christopher McCandless and Robert Bogucki.
Both men rejected the comforts of civilised society to set off into a hazardous landscape in search of solitude and self-sufficiency. But one man died, and the other lived.
And now, seated at this hilltop bench, I’ve got the chance to find out from Robert Bogucki why you’d do it.
Why some people need to lose themselves in the wilderness in order to feel found, and are willing to gamble their one crack at life to do so.
Erin Parke: Squirrel?
Robert Bogucki: Mm hmmm.
Erin Parke: So, recording.
Erin Parke VO: Up until now all I’ve really known about Robert is that he’s from a pretty wealthy family in California, and his Catholic faith is important to him.
I’ve noticed that he's got a sharp mind that is better suited to debate rather than small talk. And it turns out he’s always had a contrarian streak.
Erin Parke: Do you remember, like, when you were a teenager were you rebellious at all?
Robert Bogucki: In what way?
Erin Parke: In your behaviour, in following social norms and your parent's rules and so on.
Robert Bogucki: Uh, I questioned everything. If that's what you mean.
Erin Parke: Question authority?
Robert Bogucki: Yeah, and pretty much every authority is not appreciative of your questions. Except for the ultimate authority, which I think is God and he's okay with it.
Erin Parke VO: Robert sounds like he would have been a very bright, but maybe argumentative kid in class.
So it checks out that as he reached adolescence he began to feel disillusioned with the organised religion that he'd been raised with.
Erin Parke: Were you lacking a feeling of peace, do you think?
Robert Bogucki: Yeah, that's a good way to put it. But you don't know that, you're just agitated, right?
Society is not going to save itself. I think it’s got its own, you know, downfall coming.
Erin Parke VO: Robert had a lot going for him. He was from a close-knit family, and he got into a prestigious university. But, the the whole time he was wrestling with a pervasive sense of despair.
To him, society felt shallow, and greedy, and headed in a bad direction. And God seemed to be missing in action. So he wanted to feel vividly the presence of a higher power.
Robert Bogucki: The original idea, I think, was to somehow bring God down to earth or have a relationship with this God of this religion I grew up with.
Erin Parke VO: There’s a long history of humans seeking spiritual strength through fasting and physical deprivation.
And it was in 1999, as Robert and Janet cycled around Australia, that Robert’s opportunity came.
To test whether God would keep him alive.
Robert Bogucki: The initial intention was to just find a place in the middle of the desert just to sit for a week and fast at that point and contemplate the universe.
Whether I lived or not I will be, you know, unsatisfied with this life if I don't do it.
Let's test this theory and see what happens.
Erin Parke VO: Robert's mind’s made up. He will find the emptiest and most isolated patch of land in Australia and go into it alone.
To deny his body food and water for as long as it takes to find clarity.
He doesn’t want to die. But he was ok with the fact that he might.
Erin Parke: That is a really high stakes thing to do, isn't it?
Robert Bogucki: You say it's high stakes and like it's a big, you know, gamble or something, but really it's just, you know, became I need to do this.
Erin Parke VO: Eight months into their trip Janet decides to fly home to the States, and Robert begins to prepare. Going without water for days at a time, and spending a week alone, fasting at Uluru.
It’s now or never.
From a dusty phone box on the edge of the desert he rings Janet, and tells her he's heading inland, alone, for six weeks.
And she gives her blessing.
Robert Bogucki: Yeah, I don't know if I would have been able to go through that if I hadn't felt her vote of confidence. Because I wasn't going to hear it from my parents.
Erin Parke VO: Still, he whips off a brief postcard to his parents letting them know he’ll be out of contact.
Then, Robert, who has been thinking about doing this ever since he was a teenager, he plunges into the desert.
He’s 33 years old, and in his words;
Robert Bogucki: Full of piss and vinegar. So, you got something to prove to yourself.
Erin Parke VO: As he begins his long walk the distractions drop away and there’s so much time to observe the landscape. And so much time to think.
A couple of times, during that first week, Robert finds himself overcome with emotion realising he’s kept the people who love him - his parents, Janet – at arms length.
At one point he collapses to the hot sand, sobbing uncontrollably, a mix of grief and elation that God has helped him to this realisation.
But as the days go on, Robert finds his rhythm.
And he starts to feel a deep connection to the landscape.
Noticing minute changes as he slowly, steadily, treks inland.
Robert Bogucki: You stop thinking about what you left behind. You stop playing songs in your head.
Every maybe, three, four, five days, you would see a little bit of a change in the colour of the sand or the bushes and trees that were growing.
Erin Parke VO: After the third day, Robert stops eating.
He keeps walking under the burning sun, the intense heat. He finds ways to try to ease the discomfort, burying himself in the depths of the sand.
Robert Bogucki: I was just trying to cool off. And I would dig down past the hot sand to the cool sand and throw it all over myself every, every day in the middle of the day.
Erin Parke VO: I get the feeling Robert almost enjoyed the physical pain of fasting and pushing his body in this extreme environment.
It was evidence of progress, of growth.
Robert Bogucki: A lot of survival is dropping the mirror, dropping the microphone, dropping the camera, and not watching yourself, selfie stick, here I am out here walking through the woods.
It's part of letting go of the ego. That's all attached to the ego and, you know, you gotta drop all that and just be out there.
Erin Parke VO: The mental clutter falls away as he focuses on the next step and the next sand-dune.
It’s like his mind and body are in sync with the natural world for the first time.
Robert Bogucki: I had feelings out there in the desert too, that my spirit has wanted to do this thing for a long time, longer than a lifetime.
These are age old questions to answer.
A good analogy would be stripping the bark off the tree. Because you're just want to strip off all of your parts and get down to the essence and find out what that essence is.
Find out your, your basic self.
Erin Parke VO: I feel like this is something a lot of people aspire to. To find clarity and a clearer sense of self, and a feeling of wellbeing.
You only have to look at Instagram to see how preoccupied we all are with it. But most of us who feel a bit lost might opt for a yoga retreat rather than anything this extreme.
While Robert’s speaking with me he holds his body still, his brow furrowing and his eyes casting across the vast valley below.
I like him, and feel like I’m starting to understand him better, but Robert’s not the easiest person to interview.
I think it’s because more than most people, he thinks carefully about what he wants to say, and the best way to say it. And he pauses, chewing over the idea at hand, sometimes asking me a question about my question before answering.
Robert doesn't just tell you what you want to hear, and I respect that. I'm a bit of a people-pleaser, and so I kind of envy the way doesn’t feel obliged to deliver a simple, easy answer to everything.
Robert Bogucki: There you go, he's got a mushroom in his mouth.
Erin Parke: This is now a squirrel that's running around with a big chunky mushroom in his face. Never a dull moment.
Erin Parke VO: Once the squirrel’s gone, I ask Robert what the hardest thing was about those long, hot days in the Great Sandy Desert .
And he says it wasn’t the searing sun, or the blasting wind, or the throat so parched it was hard to swallow.
The worst thing, he says, the demon that stalked him in the desert, was despair.
Robert Bogucki: And despair is the bottomless pit as far as I'm concerned.
Everything will say, you know, you don't have food, you don't have water, you're in the middle of a desert. What are you going to do?
And that's when you just say, well, I'm not in control.
I might not do anything.
Erin Parke: I’m not just talking about you, I’m talking about everyone. We all like to feel in control of ourselves and our environment.
What was your experience of losing control?
Robert Bogucki: That happened pretty quick, I think.
It was all humble pie after that, it was whatever you want to do, God, I'm down with it. I'm not in control.
Erin Parke VO: By this time, Robert’s deliberately pushing against all of his body's hard-wired instincts to survive. The urge to turn back towards safety, to eat the brightly-coloured flowers that shimmer on the desert trees.
It's a discipline of mind, a determination that I know I don’t have. And to be honest that I’m not sure that I’d want.
After 20 days of walking, mentally and physically exhausted, Robert comes to a kind of natural sand-bowl. A calm, sheltered space that seems like a sanctuary for his battered shell of a body. He feels it’s God’s will for him to stop here – to sit quietly, in contemplation.
Robert Bogucki: All kinds of self-consciousness just dropped. So, it was just, uh, sit there and look at nature.
I did not know that your relationship with the world could be so, I don’t know, internal. Whereas, your molecules and their molecules are really part of the same world, universe, whatever you want to call it – existence.
Erin Parke: Which is something that indigenous cultures and people have known forever really, isn't it?
Robert Bogucki: I think the knowledge has just been darkened by selfishness throughout the ages where now we're in a modern world where you're just, you're not in tune to that at all.
Erin Parke VO: For seven days, Robert sits there.
Not speaking. Not eating. Not drinking.
And he describes a kind of elation. And a feeling of peace.
Robert Bogucki: Clarity of mind seems to be a pretty common thing that comes, comes to you after you realise that you're not going to die from not eating I think it's just the body preparing itself. You know, I'm not part of this world anymore.
Part of the thing you learn being out fasting in the wilds is that you don't have that pressure and you don't need that pressure. Life living for its own sake is fulfilling.
You have to remember that your life is only a short blip on the millennial scale.
Erin Parke: Is that a thought that makes you feel good? Or is that a thought that can be scary or depressing?
Robert Bogucki: You could see it either way, I use that thought to keep perspective.
Erin Parke VO: After a week in the sand-bowl, Robert feels calm and refreshed and at peace.
He feels God has been with him on this gruelling journey, and has tested him with moments of despair and revealed himself in times of silence.
His body is feeling the strain of dehydration and malnutrition, but he’s still alive when the conventional wisdom is that he should be dead.
But still, Robert feels no desire to turn back.
Instead he resumes his journey, walking deeper and deeper into the desert.
Why stop now? His original intention had been to emerge near the town of Fitzroy Crossing, and according to his map he was on track to make it in another couple of weeks.
Within a few days, on his fortieth day in the desert, Robert reaches the Edgar ranges
It's a cluster of gorges and cliff-drops, a veritable oasis of shade and potentially even puddles of water.
But Robert's physical state is deteriorating rapidly. His skin now stretched across the bone in places, no padding, no insulation. A body starting to give way under the sustained strain of malnutrition.
By this point, according to Robert he’s gone four weeks without food and twelve days without water. That’s four times longer than what the survival guides advise a person can go.
Robert Bogucki: I remember walking down the creek and just resting from rock to rock that I could lean on.
Okay, you know, you've had long enough here, go to the next rock.
Autopilot, I guess, I did have to make the decisions, but the body just kept moving.
Erin Parke VO: And it's not just his body. His brain is foggy, the high-powered organ starved of nutrients and moisture, now struggling to function.
Robert Bogucki: I had been fasting for six weeks and had no water. And what that does to a body is like insulation from emotion and thought as well.
I mean, thoughts take a while to soak in when you're in that state.
Erin Parke VO: As Robert picks carefully through the rocky entrance to the Edgar ranges, he's becoming too weak to carry the handful of belongings that he's brought along the entire 400 kilometre journey.
He will leave them here, he decides. The blue tarpaulin, the water bottles, and the bible.
And boy, they, people, when they found that Bible they're like, ‘Oh, he's given up, oh my God, he thinks it's the end of the world’.
My answer was, it was too heavy.
And I don't even know if that answer sunk in. But people wanna see what they wanna see.
Erin Parke VO: Robert doesn’t know that searchers are closing in on him. They’re now less than ten kilometres away. The Americans, with their dogs in hand-made leather booties and entourage of media helicopters.
Then, on Day 42, after almost six weeks alone in the desert, after willingly putting his life on the line for this journey something changes and Robert carefully lays rocks out on the ground, spelling out the word ‘help’.
But even as he’s doing it, he’s not sure he really wants to be rescued.
I find it a bit confusing. Going into the desert on purpose, then laying out a sign asking for help, and to this day saying he didn’t really want rescuing anyway.
But it's worth keeping in mind that Robert's brain was starved and he was on an extreme spiritual and personal journey that was evolving. And throughout it all, he believes it’s God who’s in control anyway.
And, according to Robert, there’s something else going on. A final demon he’s been grappling with, that still needs to be conquered.
His ego.
Robert Bogucki: It's insidious. That ego is just, it hides in just about every little cranny that you can imagine in your mind.
Erin Parke VO: The ingrained pride that quietly whispers in his ear that'd be embarrassing to turn back, and shameful to ask for help.
Robert Bogucki: That would be like saying I've failed.
And then I said, well, that's ridiculous. It's not failing. You're afraid to let people in. You need to do something about your fear.
Erin Parke VO: Robert had stared down his inner demons, and this final one felt important. To be vulnerable, to accept help.
Robert Bogucki: The whole trip was facing your fear. Now here's this other fear. So, why don't you just go ahead and make a help sign and get over it.
Erin Parke VO: Even during his final few hours in the desert, Robert’s weary brain chews over whether to take the sign down.
But he leaves it.
Throughout the interview, Robert's seems reluctant to admit that his body was failing, and that he was close to death.
He talks about how he'd found water on that final day, and how he would have been in good enough health to walk out.
And he doesn't like the word 'rescued' because it implies he would have otherwise died.
But then he says something that reveals his vulnerability. That he was afraid to die.
Robert Bogucki: It's natural to be afraid of death. You know, everybody comes to grips with it eventually. I just happen to do it as a healthy 33-year-old. And instead of waiting till I was 99 years old.
Erin Parke VO: So there he now lays. In the cool, shady base of a rocky gully, sipping manky water he's scooped from a puddle and thinking about that pesky 'help' sign and how hard the rock feels under his emaciated frame of a body.
Robert's got no idea that just a few kilometres away, a cascading series of events is occurring that will wrench him from this peaceful place of physical pain and plunge him back into the noisy, opinionated world he was so keen to escape.
Ahead on the next episodes of Expanse Nowhere Man, Robert Bogucki’s about to find out that sometimes being 'lost' is easier than is being found.
Archival reporter: He emerged from the bush into the arms of a media maelstrom.
Lindsay Greatorex: Thats when I heard the shout ‘He’s been found he's been found’.
Robert Bogucki: We were going to sit around there just talking with our thumbs up our butts.
Archival: And it was an extremely irresponsible thing to do.
Ben Martin: And a carload of people went by and yelled out the window who's going to pay Bogucki’s holiday?
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.