Rod Ansell

In May 1977, shortly after completing a buffalo catching job in Kununurra, Western Australia, Ansell decided to travel to the Victoria River on what he claimed was a fishing trip. He was not specific about his plans, only telling his then-girlfriend Lorraine he would be back in a few months. When Ansell's motorboat was capsized and sunk by "something big" (he later sensationally claimed it was a whale), no one knew where to find him.[2][4] Ansell managed to board his tender, a small dinghy with only a single oar, and retrieve his two 8-week-old bull terriers and a small amount of equipment (a rifle, a knife, some canned food, and bedding). But with no fresh water, Ansell was in a perilous situation, stranded almost 200 kilometres (120 mi) from the nearest permanent human settlement,[2] and one of his dogs had a broken leg.[2]

During the night, Ansell's dinghy drifted out to sea, eventually washing up on a small island at the mouth of the Fitzmaurice River, north of the Victoria River. Over the next 48 hours, Ansell travelled up the Fitzmaurice on tidal flows, becoming severely dehydrated but eventually finding fresh water above the saltwater tidal range. Ansell subsisted on wild cattle and buffalo, hunting by day to feed himself and his dogs. He sometimes resorted to drinking cattle blood as a substitute for water, the fluids helping to maintain his body's electrolyte balance.[2] He was also able to follow bees to their hive to retrieve honey. During the night, Ansell slept in a tree fork out of reach of crocodiles, although he shared the tree with a brown tree snake. At one point, he shot a 5-metre (16 ft) crocodile, whose head he kept as a souvenir.[2]

Ansell never counted on being rescued; he had told others he would be away for months, and any search parties would be combing over the Victoria River, not the Fitzmaurice. He rested his hope on walking overland to a pastoral station when the wet season began. One day, Ansell heard the distinctive tinkling of horse-bells, which drew him to two Aboriginal stockmen and their cattle manager, Luke McCall.[2][5] Although he was somewhat emaciated, Ansell was otherwise healthy. Once back home, he apparently kept his seven-week ordeal to himself, fearing he would upset his mother with his recklessness. He later claimed the experience was hardly a big deal, explaining:

All the blokes up in this country, who work with cattle, ringers, stockmen, bull-catches, whatever, all of them, have really narrow shaves all the time. But they never talk about it...I think the opinion is that if you come through in one piece, and you're still alive, then nothing else really matters. It's like going out to shoot a kangaroo. You don't come back and say you missed by half-an-inch. You either got him or you didn't. So that is how I looked at it. Until the paper got hold of the story, and that changed a lot of things.[2]

Newspapers dubbed Ansell the "modern-day Robinson Crusoe" and he was making headlines by August 1977.

In 1977, after becoming a sensation in the Australian media following his harrowing ordeal in the Outback, Ansell met Joanne van Os, 22, a radio operator originally from Melbourne who was then working at the remote Aboriginal community of Wadeye.[6] The two fell in love and married, having two sons: Callum (born 1979) and Shawn (born 1981).[1] The family spent much of their early years living "under just a canvas sheet."[6] With no electricity or running water, they cooked by campfire and communicated by radio.

In 1979, filmmaker Richard Oxenburgh asked Ansell to relive his adventures in the documentary film To Fight the Wild, which the following year was published as a book. Although both accepted Ansell's version of events uncritically, his story was frequently treated with skepticism by locals in the Top End.[4] Some believed it was a publicity stunt and others wondered why Ansell did not follow the river downstream to the nearest town.[4] When Ansell was asked in interviews what he was doing in the remote Australian wilderness by himself, he claimed he was on a fishing trip. Privately, however, he confided to friends that he was actually poaching crocodiles.[5]

In 1981, Ansell was invited to Sydney where he was interviewed by English journalist Michael Parkinson for his television program Parkinson. Ansell attended the interview barefoot.[2] While staying at the famous five-star Sebel Townhouse Hotel, he slept in his sleeping bag on the floor rather than on his bed, and was reportedly mystified by his room's bidet.[3][4] Ansell's interview and curious city antics sparked Paul Hogan's interest, inspiring him and co-writers Ken Shadie, and John Cornell to create the character Mick "Crocodile" Dundee.[4] Following the unexpected blockbuster success of Crocodile Dundee, Ansell unsuccessfully took Hogan to court.[3][4]

According to Ansell's friends, he was "at one" with Arnhem Land's Indigenous Australians, and like the film character, he spoke Urapunga fluently, having become a "fully initiated white man."[3][4] An "unassuming achiever" who embodied "the spirit of the Territory," Ansell was named Territorian of the Year in 1987 for helping to put Top End on the world map.[3] Journalist Chips Mackinolty, who met Ansell in the 1980s, described him as "articulate and likable, if somewhat intense."[2] However, Ansell's new-found fame alienated him from his peers, and he later lamented of his rejection back home:

Proving the point about the story being true or not wouldn't matter that much. Because the people it would affect, who affect me, are the people who live where I work, and know me. And people up here have a phobia about appearing on the media. So that was detrimental to my standing in their eyes...they thought it was a terrible thing to do.[2]