Real Survival Stories - Stranded in the Outback: Stuck Fast in Mud

Episode Date: August 19, 2026

Brendan Cook, his partner Mel and two of their friends take a trip along the legendary Birdsville Track - one of Australia’s most notorious outback roads. But an unusual series of events results in their vehicle getting stuck in silt and mud, sinking further with every attempt to extract it. As the sun beats down, Brendan and his companions must free their car before their dwindling food and water supplies run out entirely. But as the hours and days pass without success, their only remaining options appear drastic and dangerous… A Noiser podcast production. Hosted by John Hopkins. Written by Heléna Lewis | Produced by Ed Baranski | Assistant Producer: Luke Lonergan | Interview by Joe Viner | Production Assistant: Chris McDonald | Exec produced by Joel Duddell | Sound Supervisor: Matt Peaty | Sound design by Jacob Booth | Assembly edit by Rob Plummer | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Ralph Tittley. For ad-free listening, bonus material and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Click the subscription banner at the top of the feed to get started. Or go to noiser.com/subscriptions If you have an amazing survival story of your own that you’d like to put forward for the show, let us know. Drop us an email at [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.ca. It's late January 2014. Deep in the untamed wilds of the South Australian outback, a searing sun bakes the dusty red earth of the desert.

Stretching out as far as the eye can see, this immense, barren expanse is so inhospitable and so bleakly beautiful, that it's more reminiscent of the surface of Mars than planet Earth. It isn't somewhere that supports human life easily, and few people ever grace the handful of rough dirt tracks that cut up. across its desolate terrain. Yet, today, inside the hollow of a dried-up creek bed, more than 12 miles from the nearest road, something glints in the sunlight, a sudden flash of silver, winking like a newly minted coin. This glare comes from the bonnet of a large stationary car. It is resting at an odd angle, its wheels submerged in a quagmire of sticky, foul-smelling silt. Kneeling beside the vehicle are four mud-splattered figures.

30-year-old Brendan Cook wrestles a rusty piece of scrap metal beneath one of the tires, sweat trickling down his neck. Panting, he sits back on his heels and bats a thick swarm of flies away from his face as one of his companions climbs into the driver's seat. The engine growls and the tires spin, sending mud and silt spraying through the arid air. Brendan holds his breath as the car lurches forward straining to pull itself out of the bog. A few seconds later, it rolls backwards again. The strategy wise we would try and find anything that would hold weight and get it under the tire so it wouldn't seem to sort of spread the weight of the wheel out.

The tire would jump onto it. But because the mud was so thick and slushy, every time they got on the log or the rock or the steel, it would just push it down to the dirt, into the slush. Brendan wipes a filthy hand across his parched lips and glances at the empty, endless horizon. Then he grits his teeth and sets to work again. As the hours stalk passed and the car stubbornly refuses to budge, the atmosphere amongst the four travelers changes, sliding from hope to desperation. By now they've been stranded for almost 48 hours.

They have little food left, and more critically, only a few. remaining mouthfuls of water each. In an environment as harsh and alien as this that isn't going to sustain them for long. But with no way of communicating their distress and no likelihood of being found by chance, the only option they have is to save themselves. The stress had set in and the conversation moved

from enjoying against others' company, enjoying the outback to being about survival and one of the next steps. What are the things we need to do now? to preserve ourselves for the next day, and what's the critical decisions we need to make to get ourselves out of here. Ever wondered what you would do when disaster strikes?

If your life depended on your next decision, could you make the right choice? Welcome to Real Survival Stories. These are the astonishing tales of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations. People suddenly forced to fight for their lives. In this episode, we meet Brendan Cook. In 2014, the exonerated.

Experienced outdoorsman takes a trip with his partner Mel and their two friends along the legendary Birdsville track, one of Australia's most isolated and untravelled outback roads. But an unusual series of events results in their car becoming stuck fast in silt and mud, resisting all efforts to be freed and sinking further with every attempt to extract it. The more we dug, the more the mess that became of it, we moved the car quite a few metres. But every time you moved it, it would get more stuck and more stuck. Stranded in the fierce heat of the Australian outback, Brendan and his companions must find a way of freeing their car

before their dwindling food and water supplies run out entirely. But as the hours and days pass without success, their only remaining options appear drastic and dangerous. We'd realise that this wasn't an unusual situation that we put ourselves out of meantime before. we'd realize that we've sort of exhaust their options and we were done. I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is real survival stories.

It's late January 2014. In Australia, it's the height of summer. And all across the country, people are gearing up to celebrate Australia Day with a long weekend full of parties, barbecues and community gatherings. It's a time when friends and family come together, wanting to mark their country's official National Day with those they love most. But in Roxby Downs, a small isolated town in South Australia, some 350 miles north of Adelaide,

a large silver car crunches along a dusty road, heading away from civilization. Inside the air-conditioned vehicle is 30-year-old Brendan Cook, his partner Mel and their two friends, a couple named Matt and again, Mel. Rather than joining in the town's traditional celebrations, this foursome have a different plan in mind. Taking advantage of the long weekend, they're off on a road trip to the iconic town of Birdsville, nearly 450 miles further north.

It's a mark on the map where if you're an outdoors, you venture a sort of person, you've been to Birdsville, you've driven the Birdsville track. That's one of the adventures you've been on as an Australian who does those kind of things. It's on your bucket list of stuff to do. And we always say, yeah, we've got to go and do that. We live right at the end of Birdsville Track. Let's do it. It's a journey which will take them right through the heartland of some of Australia's most spectacular and challenging scenery.

Originally opened in the 1860s to move cattle, the Birdsville Track hasn't changed much in the intervening years. It is among the most isolated routes in the country, and with only a few places to refuel and buy supplies along the way, it's possible to travel for hours or even days without encountering another car or person. The track itself is famously rough to drive. But for Brendan, Mel and their friends,

this challenge is part of the appeal. There's a few roadhouses on the way. We knew there were few landmarks, think the sea, things would do. It was a road untravelled for us. So it was an adventure. Why not? We had time to kill. Brendan's love of adventure is intrinsic to his character

and stems from a childhood spent in a small outback community in New South Wales. I really grew my passion to the outdoors. We used to catch crayfish and catch rabbits and chase pigs around the bush. We lived a very adventurous life as young boys, so yeah, that's probably where my desire to be in the outdoors came from. Brendan's passion for the natural world led him to study environmental science at university. He spent some time working as a zookeeper, before becoming a consultant for a company specialising in wildlife management around airports.

The job took him across the globe, but whilst exciting and rewarding, the frequent traveling had its drawbacks. When, after a few years, Brendan and his childhood sweetheart Mel started talking about settling down and raising a family, he began looking for work closer to home. It was then that he found a job in Roxby Downs, running a small airport connected to a nearby mining company. Though the area's isolation would put some people off,

for Brendan and Mel, it was part of the appeal. We loved the venture at the time. It was something new. We thought, this would be cool, living the outback. It's pretty remote. We liked to forward driving and camping and hunting and being out of the bush. So if we couldn't have thought of a better place to live, and we moved there sort of sight unseen.

And it was the first of a while to be shocked, because you're a long way from anywhere. Nothing there, right? There's just in the middle of nowhere. So the first few months of our life, we're like, what have we done? Why are we here? Soon though, Brendan and Mel began to make friends.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, they found that many of Roxby Downs' inhabitants shared their passion for adventure. When not working, they spent all their time in the bush, reveling in the wild beauty of the landscape. Always been in the outdoors, but it's always really enjoyed myself being in the bush, being around animals and being around wildlife and wild places, just love the experience. I'm a pretty passionate birdwatcher. When I first started dating my wife, we would go camping in the back of the yute, drive to remote places, take the dogs and either go hunting or fishing or just camping and just enjoy it, have a cook by the fire and sit by the fire. I think and that's being the source of our sort of weekend entertainment for 30 years. Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer.

That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation walk. Challenge yourself, friends and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the future. fear of cancer. Register today at pmcf walk.ca. This August on the Noiser podcast network, Jane Austen Stories returns. This time Dame Julie Andrews will be reading another beloved classic Emma. Step into the village of Highbury, home to the handsome and clever Emma Woodhouse. Witness the delicate art of matchmaking, where appearances can deceive, and true affections

are not always easily guessed. On short history of, where herring and around the world with the groundbreaking journalist Nellie Bly and grappling with the surreal with Salvador Dali. On real survival stories, we're in the shark-filled waters off the coast of Florida and trundling down the Birdsville track deep in the Australian bush. And in Sherlock Holmes short stories, Holmes investigates the disappearance of a missing star rugby player in The Adventure of the Missing Three Quarter. Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free on Noiser Plus. On the Birdsville track, the atmosphere inside Brendan's Silver Land Cruiser is upbeat and happy. Having taken a few extra days off work, on top of the long weekend, the group is looking forward to taking the drive slow.

They tend to break the journey up and camp out under the stars at night, thereby giving themselves plenty of time to drink in the area's stunning scenery and range of wildlife. The environment's very harsh. There's few creeks and waterways in between. It's mostly long, straight roads. between the sand dune areas. So you've got these quite immense, hard, stony earth areas, and lots of birds, like, so the place is alive. One of the reasons we're up there is we had a lot of rain that year,

and a lot of wildlife comes into that environment in the centre of Australia after the rain, so it's abundant of wildlife. If you've got kangaroos and, you know, cockatoos and all kinds of amazing pigeons and other small birds everywhere, so the place seems alive. But despite the desolate beauty of this terrain,

it isn't the most comfortable of journeys. It was hot and it was summertime, so it was really hot every day. It was, you know, 45 degrees plus. So you couldn't really be out of the car in the sunlight and enjoy it that long because it was so bloody hot. So you saw the day it was broken up between driving, air conditioning, driving, till you found something, get out, have lunch, enjoy the lake or enjoy whatever it could be, the bush, saw some camels, you know, that kind of stuff. Get back in the car and then from me in the car until dark where there was no flies.

I actually got a photo of me eating a green granny smith apple. I've taken a bite out of it, and my hand is like a black glove with flies over it. So it's a challenging place to be, regardless of what adventure you're on. It's just a really rough place to be. Even with four-wheel drive, the unsealed road takes its toll on their car and ends up shredding one of the tires. They are forced to stop and change it by the roadside in the sweltering heat. In three days of driving, they only spot a handful of other vehicles,

so it's a timely reminder that if something gets a... goes wrong out here, there is nobody to offer help. It's no surprise then that when they finally reach the town of Birdsville, the foursome are in a celebratory mood. We've done it, we arrived essentially a compromise. Yeah, we got here. It's great. Went to the pub and a few beers. As well as enjoying Birdsville's pub, the gang explore the local area, replace their spare tire, replenish their supplies of food and water, and try the town's famous camel pie. But despite its reputation, it's a small place, and it doesn't take long. to enjoy all that Birdsville has to offer.

Within a day or two, the group was ready to set out for home. There's not much there, no people there. It was just as much about the journey it was the destination. So we've got the birds deal, realize what was there. There's not a lot there. And we didn't expect a lot. It was, as we expected, we sought the sites and decided to head off. It's mid-afternoon, a couple of days later.

A dusty, silver car bounces over the gritty surface of the Birdsville track, the merciless summer sun beating down upon it. it. Inside, Brendan, Mel and their two friends scan the endless ochre landscape unfolding around them. So far, their return journey has passed without a hitch, and now, just five or six hours away from Roxby Downs, they're searching for somewhere to camp for their final night in the outback. They aren't far from Cooper Creek, one of the area's major rivers. Dry for much of the year, when it floods, it's been known to make the Birdsville track impassable, forcing dry driving. Forcing dry into a significant detour to an old ferry crossing.

Given the current weather, though, there's no doubt the creek would be dry, and its parched banks could make an ideal campground. Decision made, the group turns off the main road and onto a small dirt track leading towards the creek, ignoring a road-closed sign as they do so. You don't really take notice of signs in our back. We knew that river crossing and that river crossing, and that floodplain was there.

We knew that's where it would have been. And it was the nicest place within a few hundred kilometers of where we should camp that night. So there was no logic around, is there danger in the sign? Should we go around? It was just like, I know it's there. It's just a sign for the science sake. It was nothing more than that.

Like, you don't really obey that sort of stuff in Australia. It's not like a well-managed suburban road. Someone put it there for some reason, and it's probably been there for years and everyone's strolling around it. There was no more to it than that. When they arrived, the beauty of the spot takes their breath away.

Stretching out before them is an enormous swave of dried up floodplains, punctuated by the hollow of the desiccated creek bed, now blanketed in a hard layer of sun-baked silt and mud. Nearby lies an old barge that would have once been used to ferry cars over the flooded river. Now it slowly rusts, disintegrating into the scorched earth. As the sun slides below the horizon, Brendan and his companions make the most of their final night in the outback together. They eat and drink liberally, leaving just enough to get them to their next refueling stop the following day.

As darkness sets in, someone suggests they take the car out to spotlighting, a method of finding wild life at night using the powerful glare of torches to catch the animals' eyeshine. We got the car ahead of spotlighting and hadn't driven too far, who's driving around him, things in the grass and on the june's and we saw a few things I can't remember what you've seen and then we just got out of sorts when you were the camp ones we didn't sort of realize where we were in relation to the boat and motion to the ribbed and just driving out and all of a sudden the car just immediately sunk into the mud the car lurches as the ground suddenly gives way beneath it unbeknownst to Brendan and his companions they've driven too close to the middle of the creek

bed where beneath its sun-baked crust the ground is soft and boggy with this crust now broken it only takes seconds for the wheels to sink into the thick, sticky silt underneath. The engine strains, the tires spinning uselessly as they try to gain traction, sending muds fluttering backwards. The vehicle is stuck fast. It would be easy to panic in this situation, but Brendan's outback experience means he is in fact no stranger to extracting his car from bogs and sand dunes. It's too dark to attempt anything now, but come morning, they should have no trouble in freeing the vehicle. So it wasn't a feeling of urgency. It wasn't really a feeling of stress at all.

You realised it were bogged, got out. Yeah, rid of the matter. That's fine. Right, we'll sort it out tomorrow. I just jumped out of the car and walked off to the camp. They retreat into their tents and sleep, unperturbed by this turn of events. When the sun rises the next day, they wake and head over to deal with the car. Daylight reveals that it's stranded about 50 or 60 metres away from the bank and as they approach the vehicle it quickly becomes clear

the situation is far, far worse than they had anticipated. When they look at the car, they realize like it is, it's really bogged. It's really, really bogged. Shocked to discover their car has sunk up to its axles in the silt of the creek bed. The group quickly begin digging to try and free its wheels. They scoop large clumps of claggy, viscous mud away, trying not to gag at the stench. But as they work, it soon becomes apparent that their efforts are only making things worse.

The mud flat there was quite hard on top because of the baking sun. As soon as you crack the surface, the silk below it was really thick and really horribly saline and disgusting and stinky and sticky. Now we moved the car quite a few meters, and so the more we dug, the more that messed it became of it, every time you moved it would get more stuck and more stuck. Two and five Canadians will hear the words you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation walk.

Challenge yourself, friends and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcf walk.ca.ca. This August on the Noiser Podcast Network, Jane Austen Stories returns. This time Dame Julie Andrews will be reading another beloved classic Emma. Step into the village of Highbury, home to the handsome and clever Emma Woodhouse. Witness the delicate art of matchmaking, where appearances can deceive, and true affections are not always easily guessed.

On short history of, we're herring around the world with the great, groundbreaking journalist Nellie Bly and grappling with the surreal with Salvador Dali. On real survival stories, we're in the shark-filled waters off the coast of Florida and trundling down the Bardsville track deep in the Australian bush. And in Sherlock Holmes short stories, Holmes investigates the disappearance of a missing star rugby player in The Adventure of the Missing Three Quarter. Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free on Noiser Plus. Brendan frowns as he eyes the bogged car.

Initial efforts to free the vehicle have proved it's more firmly entrenched in the silt of the creek bed than previously thought. Nevertheless, Brendan, his girlfriend Mel and their two friends haven't come into the bush unprepared. Part of their emergency equipment includes Max Trax Recovery Boards, textured plastic planks designed to wedge beneath car wheels to help stranded vehicles gain traction. But the ground around the car is now so soft, even these aren't helping. The tracks weren't really working at well and we were digging to nowhere essentially It was a lost effort essentially

Your whole day, we were exhausted We were covered in this horrible mud We didn't have a lot of water left We'd have a lot of food left And we thought we're really in it here Got as clean as we could Went to bed and thought the next day We'll have another crack at it

The following morning The group rises bright and early To get some work done before the heat of the day sets in Having expected to be back in Civilisation by now Their food and water supplies are running dangerously low And the general mood is

significantly more downcast than the previous day. Realising that they need a change of tactic, the Fordham use a small toolkit to start taking apart the old barge nearby. They drag rusty poles and pieces of scrap metal over to their bogged car along with rocks, tree branches, and anything else they can wedge beneath its tyres. Basically, the strategy wise, we would try and find anything that would hold weight and get it under the tyres,

so it wouldn't sink, to sort of spread the weight of the wheel out Ty would jump onto it, but because the mud was, say, thick and slushy, every time they'd got on the log or the rock or the steel, they would just push it down to the dirt, into the slush. As the day drags on and the temperature continues to rise, the situation begins to look dire. They now have virtually no food or water left, and although they try occasionally to pick up a signal on their radio, they're so far from civilization that it's no use. However, they do seem to have a shred of luck on their side. Two or three miles away, what appears to be a large black water tank is just about visible in the distance.

It's likely a container used to store water with a vast cattle paddock strewn across the outback. And if it is, right now, it could be a lifesaver. It was probably why we didn't really feel stressed they took out of water, because we saw the tank and we thought, ah, we water over there, even though we got no water. We said there's some belief that we'd find some water, and that was sort of the backer. I'm running out of water. We'll just go for walk up there. Assured in the belief that should they fail to extract the car today,

they can at least replenish their water supplies at the tank. The group doggedly continues their work on the vehicle. They grapple with the tires, sweat running down their backs, the smudgy mud smearing their arms and legs. And their discomforts don't end there. There's moments where the flies are that bad. You have to wear a fly hood. So it's basically a mesh.

hood that goes over your head, where you can walk around in the day and not have your eyes and nose and he is on Barnabets flies. And those flies are really small flies. And they're trying to get into your body. They're trying to get into your eyesopers and get into your nose and your ears and your mouth. They're trying to actively enter you. And it's disgusting. When the heat eventually becomes too intense, Brendan and his companions are forced to retreat to the shade to try and rest as best they can. But even that proves to be difficult. You're laying down, and you just want to rest, and you can't because there's flies over you, so the flygold goes on.

And then when the flygoods on, they're still on the hood. They're still on this mesh material trying to get at you. It's very uncomfortable. So it's relentless. In the late afternoon when you've been happy with the flies all day, you really look forward to night when they all go away. Yeah, you really start counting the clock, counting the hours down before sunset when you know they're not going to be there.

However, as the hours pass, the irritation of the flies gives way to an even greater concern. the issue of water. When efforts to extricate the car still yield no results, it's agreed that the two women will walk to the water tank to replenish supplies. Meanwhile, exhausted and parched, Brendan and Matt continue their attempts to free the car. As they work, they become increasingly covered in the fetid mud,

but the prospect of rinsing themselves off and quenching their thirst is enough to spur them on. Yet when the two women finally return, their faces are grim. The girls came back and they're like, there's no water. The tank was broken, been broken for years. Like, ah, that dread sort of saying that, you know, what we thought was a sense of relief of option was not what we thought it was. It's a soul-crushing blow.

They now have just a few mouthfuls of water left each, and no hope of replenishing their supplies. Having already spent hours trying to free the car in the furnace-like heat of the outback, their priorities now shift. The focus turns to finding a way of surviving the next few days. Matt, who I was with as an engineer, once you dug a hole, there was quite a lot of water in the hole, but it was hyper saline, like, dangerously saline. He'd made a steel out of a jim bean bottle in a pipe, and he was, like, trying to boil

the water and steam it and got it through. It was working, but it was not enough four of us to survive on. Matt works hard to purify the saline water, but it was a lot of it. all of his efforts bring meager results. Extracting the car from the creek bed now takes on a new level of urgency. But as evening sets in again, it becomes clear they'll have to spend another night in the outback. We'd been in the mud all day, two days, and we're filthy. We had no water to wash ourselves with, and it was baking to our skin, and we couldn't get

off, and the girls were by helping us, like, rub it off with towels or peel it off, and it was ripping our skin, and I know that, that feeling of, like, I'm covered, I'm literally caked in this horrible mud, and I've got to sleep, and it was jealous. as well. So by the end of day two, we really realised that this wasn't the usual situation that we've got ourselves out of many times before. Yeah, we're really, you know, in it. In camp that night, the mood is somber. The group has just a few apples and musli bars left, and their clean water supplies are now completely exhausted. Beneath the star-strewn sky, with the howls of distant dingoes echoing in their ears, they begin assessing their options.

Hopefully when they fail to show up at work, their colleagues will raise the alarm. But nobody knows exactly where they are, so there's no telling how long it might take for a rescue mission to find them, if it ever does. In the enormity of the outback, they are just one tiny speck. And with the main road over 12 miles away, the chances of a passing car stumbling on them are basically non-existent. I remember sitting around the care that night covered in mud and the fun of the conversation had gone

and we'll really focus on what next, what if, what's plan B, who's coming to get us, what's going to trigger them to come and get us? I'd say by that end of the second day, the stress had set in and the conversation moved from enjoying against others' company to being about survival. What are the things we need to do now to preserve ourselves for the next day?

What's the critical decisions we need to make? to get ourselves out of here. They don't reach any conclusion that night. Tired, thirsty and covered in dried mud. They retreat into their tents and do their best to get some rest. Come morning, the gravity of the situation can't be denied any longer. The next day that we realised we're not going to get in, we sort of stopped doing anything and thinking, like, what are we going to do?

It becomes clear they only have two options, and both are deeply unappealing. They can wait and hope that rescue comes to them, or they can attempt to walk out and find help. One of the biggest messages when you're in the outback is never leave your car. If there's a search mission for you, most people that are dead in the outback are not near their car. They find the car because, you know, cars are much easier to find from the sky. If you look at Australian outback fatalities, often that people have left the car. So one of the things that people always say is stay with your car.

If we know your loss, we'll look from the sky with a small aircraft and find your car. We won't find you in the outback, but we'll find your car. So that was in our minds as well, thinking like, well, we shouldn't leave the car, you know. We know the road's 20 kilometres away. We know that that road's very unused. What do we do? We can't have to sit here and waived. Whatever they choose, the odds are not in their favour.

Eventually the group decide that if come evening, nobody has appeared to rescue them, they will split up. Brendan and Mel will walk back to the Birdsville track and hope they can flag down one of the rare passing motorists. Meanwhile, their friends will remain with the bogged car in case help does eventually come. That was pretty scary, knowing that we decided that the best course of action was someone to stay with the car and others to do to walk back to the road.

So we came to that conclusion by sitting around in the morning decided if we can't walk out, it's 40 degrees, it's 20Ks, we've got no water, there'll be the end of us. So we decided we'll just lay low, laying the shade, take it easy, and then thought of ourselves, yeah, tonight we walk out. We prepared ourselves to walk out that night. Throughout the day, Brendan and Mel tried to conserve energy, all the while clinging to the faint hope that rescue might still come to them. But as the skies darken and another day fades, it's obvious that isn't going to happen. In the dead of night, with the temperature lower, they bid farewell to their friends

and set out on the long, dark walk back to the road. It was middle of the night, and we're in our back Australia. You know, there's dingoes around campsite. We heard dingoes at night all we're walking. It's a terrifying thing to have dingoes near you, howling, and probably following you. The rustling the bushes at night, a lot of animals in Australia are all nocturnal,

so there's lots of things that scurry across the path and scare the lights out of you. And it's an intimidating place. Even though I'm experiencing that space, you know, it still is. You're walking out of a stressful situation, through a stressful situation, to the unknown, I remember that feeling of, yeah, are we going to make this walk?

Two in five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcf walk.ca. Your summer travels deserve an upgrade. With select Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, and Cadillac vehicles

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the track unfurling before them like a white ribbon. It's a distance of over 12 miles. It's a huge task, particularly after several days of hard work with little sustenance. The couple will have to rely on past experience to help get them through. We've walked quite a lot of tons of pretty big walks out in our time. So we both are we can walk that far. That's probably why we chose to go, is that we used to walk quite a lot.

We've always had dogs, reactive dogs, so we've experienced the walking 10Ks on a Sunday morning for fun. That was pretty normal for us. Nevertheless, being surrounded by the haunting song of the dingoes and the unnerving rustles of the undergrowth is undeniably disturbing. Trying to keep their worries at bay, the couple take comfort in each other's company and the prospect of securing rescue for themselves and their two friends back at camp. assuring each other, providing each other comfort. When we get there, we find, someone will come past. Those kind of discussions, you know, someone will find us, still have water, we're in the middle

of the outback, everyone's going to have water and food in their car. Hopefully they've got a can of Coke or something delicious in the car. So that was the mood of the conversation along the way. It was, you know, keeping others in good spirits and getting the job done. After several hours, the stars start to fade, and Brendan and Mel reached the roadside just as the sun is rising, staining the sky with streaks of pink and orange. I remember, you know, turning around and taking a few moments and thinking, oh, that beautiful sunrise. We got there and on the side of the road,

and it started to walk up already. So we found a spot under some trees and basically were pretty exhausted and just sat down. I remember we had an apple and a little small pool of water and trying to make it last. In the three days it took them to drive up the Birdsville track, the group encountered only a handful of other cars. It could be hours or perhaps days before someone comes. There is little Brendan and Mel can do in the meantime but sit beneath the trees and wait. As the sun gathers strength and the temperature increases,

they both begin to feel the effects of exhaustion and dehydration. The hours pass in a fuzzy blur. And then, sometime in the mid-morning, Brendan and Mel are roused by sound. An engine. Here comes the car, and we didn't really make a big effort to wave it down. and we just thought they would naturally stop. We'd just stand on the side of the road, and then we're in the middle of nowhere.

We looked pretty dishevelled. So he sort of just got up and just sort of stand by the side of the road and sort of her hands up and went away. They looked at us and just went, whoosh, straight past. And the heartbreak of that moment, like, just like the gobsmack moment of what happened? Like, why did they not stop?

Like, we are clearly out of sorts. The car speeds off into the distance and within seconds it's disappeared. Brendan and Mel stare each other in shocked, horrified silence. Their chance of rescue gone. Initially, they are bewildered, but then a possible explanation comes to them. So Australia has a long history of hitchhikers and people travelling freely through the country, but has some pretty damning history in relation to those types of people using that space as well.

There's been a number of serial killers who have tariff. targeted hitchhikers and backpackers across the country, which has led to the Wolf Creek series of movies, a whole range of stories and struggles and fatalities of people in the outback who have met or come across people who are undesirable, then we've taken the advantage of them. There is a real sense, particularly for people from the big cities

travelling the outback of who are you going to come across? This is a dangerous place. It's a troubling realisation. There is no telling whether Brendan and Mollack. Mel will even see another car today. And if they do, there's evidently no guarantee that it will stop. We probably have passed, you know, half a dozen cars and days of travel on that track. And it's not like it's, you know, the State Highway where cars are traveling back and forth all the time.

Can you make it all day? Can you sit here all day and actually make it? Weakened by lack of food and water and exhausted after their long nocturnal walk, lethargy begins to steal over the couple. They drag some tree branches and an old sign onto the road. In the hopes that should they fall asleep, the obstacles will slow any passing vehicles, giving them a chance to wake up and ask for help. After that, they retreat to the shade of the trees and wait.

With the sun blazing overhead, they lean back against the rough bark and close their eyes. Ravaged by the hardships of the last few days, it isn't long before both of them start to drift. It's a few hours later. Brendan and Mel Lyslumped in the shade of a gnarled old tree Their body's weary Their minds hazy The sun burns mercilessly overhead

beating down on the long, empty road Suddenly, something jerks the couple Back to full consciousness I remember the urgency of the second car Turning up hours later It was like quite a real moment But it was like this real instant Redis and rush

Like I'll see it to the castle, go go go go go Go go go go They were jumping out into the road and waving, waving, like being frantic and into this car stopping, and it was a couple from Sydney. The car grinds to a halt, and the people inside crack the window open, their faces tense and wary. Desperately, Brendan and Mel explain their predicament and beg to be allowed into the vehicle.

But the couple inside refuse. Like the passengers in the previous car, they too are concerned about these haggard strangers, and their incredulous tale. However, after some argument, a compromise is eventually reached. The couple from Sydney will go and investigate Brendan and Mel's bogged car, then return to them. After handing over some bottles of water, they drive off, leaving the couple alone once again.

Finally, after a couple of hours, they hear the blessed sound of not just one engine, but two. It seems their rescuers have not only found their friends and the car, but they've been able to tow the stranded vehicle out of the creek bed. The relief of hearing the cars coming, and you could definitely hear it was two cars coming, and then seeing their car lead out our car, which was covered in mud, and it had been pulled out of the mud, with a sense of relief and joy, and then in celebration then, because then obviously they realised we were really stuck, realized that we were good people and were genuine, and we sat for quite a while,

and they fed us some food and got some water, and we sat on their own jokes and laughed and joined into this company, and then went away. After saying a grateful goodbye to their rescuers, Brendan, Mel and their friends have just one thing they want to do. They drive to a pub a few hours away and sit down to enjoy a large meal and some cold drinks, whilst regaling the bartender with the story of their brush with death. Telling the story, having a laugh and hunting it's a year that realises we're safe. You know, we'd made it. And then getting back in the car and driving the last three hours.

So I remember that last stretch after the sort of the celebration that we've gotten out of you, the last three hours home was quiet silence. It was just get home, get done. When they finally arrived back in Rockspeed Downs, they're shocked to learn that nobody has raised the alarm about their disappearance because nobody knew what their plans had been. For Brendan, it's a sobering discovery and teaches him a valuable lesson. The things we took away from that is my wife and I habitually now tell each other where we're going.

So I still spend a lot of time at the bush and I'll routinely, without fault, the last text I'll send her is, I am here, I am going here, I expect to be out of this time. Here's the closest point of contact. Here's where the car could be, all those details that I expect to be out in three days. So that real clear message is, if I'm not back by Monday or whatever day it is, that's the point of failure. So really making sure that your loved ones, someone in your household, and someone in your family knows what your plan is, and if you're not back, that's the point of action.

And that isn't the only safety precaution he now takes as a result of his experience in the outback. I very rarely go in running environments on my own. It's always two cars. Always take two cars. Even if it was just you and your friend, take two cars. Because if one gets stuck,

your chances of odd with two cars is far better. So you should really never travel in a single convoy in a dangerous situation. And that was the lesson, the biggest lesson to be learned. Now married and living in New Zealand, with their two sons, Brendan and Mel continue to enjoy their outdoor pursuits as a family. When I'm adventuring in New Zealand or in Australia, I'm much more cautious about the situation

and the scenario. I put myself in with my boys. I've been caught out a few times in the past where you think you're okay and you're not. So I'd say I'm much more reserved now around the level of risk when I'm in the outback or in any sort of wild place. I'm much more conservative about the risk judgment of the scenario. More than a decade on from being stranded in the outback, Brendan puts their survival down to their ability to remain calm in difficult circumstances, to make logical, rational decisions. This ability to keep his cool and tackle problems step by step once helped to save his life and now he is passing that lesson down the generations alongside his continued love for adventure and wild places.

I think that that trust in yourself, that trust in your decision making and that ability to control your emotions and not let fear overcome your rational thinking is critical any survival scenario you're in. That ability just to breathe and say, okay, we're in strife. what do I need to do? That logical thinking with a calm mind is really important. I think that's probably what got us through in a logical way to get

out and to sort of test all the options to getting out prior to the walk and the success of the roadside was about putting one foot in front of the other and just thinking about logically and something I say to my boys all the time now, how do you eat the elephant? You know, one mind at a time.

Just think about it in a very step-by-step matter. Next time, on real survival stories, catastrophe unfolds, on one of the deadliest mountains on earth, the mighty K2. In the summer of 2008, Dutch climber Wilco Van Royen is leading an expedition up the world's second tallest mountain. But after a successful ascent to the summit, the journey down spirals into chaos, when a massive icefall leaves the climber stranded without fixed ropes. Wilco and his teammates will find themselves trapped at extreme life-sapping altitude in an area known as the death zone. There is a limitation for every human being because we can't survive at 8 kilometers high. There is a lack of oxygen you will die. The only question is, what kind of period can you survive?

Time is running out. And soon it won't just be the dizzying altitude that Wilco is contending with. When a hasty decision robs him of one of his senses, he will be forced to make a drastic, death-defying choice. That's next time on real survival stories. Listen today without waiting and without ads by joining Noiser Plus. Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar-raised matters.

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