With the help of journalist-friend Greg McLean, Ricky Megee recounts his own dire plight of surviving 10 weeks alone in outback Australia. This an incredible yet sobering account of Megee’s desperation and resourcefulness as he endures a horrific ordeal battling the elements and the odds. Lost, hungry and thirsty, Megee finds himself drugged and abandoned in the middle of nowhere without footwear, provisions, water or any accurate notion of how or why he is there. This describes the struggle of the hard-living, accident-prone and itinerant lifestyle that leads up to his eventual predicament. Through his enervating encounters and emaciating experiences, fluctuating spirits and fortunes, Megee’s true grit, dogged tenacity and character is summoned. He demonstrates fortitude and resilience, improvisation and ingenuity to counter despair, starvation, dehydration and agonising injuries. The book includes a ‘menu’ of the seemingly inedible flora and fauna Megee reluctantly had to consume for sustenance to eke out survival in a humpy. The tone is matter-of-fact and rough-around-the-edges, although the voice, perhaps a little cliché-ridden, is without self-pity. This is a detailed page-turner of the will to live that pulls no punches; honest and readable, vicarious and visceral.

Tony Simmons is a bookseller at Borders in South Yarra, Melbourne

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2008, Thorpe-Bowker

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