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An Aussie with survival skills to rival Crocodile Dundee has emerged from a nine-day ordeal stuck in remote swampland looking well-fed, well-watered and generally pretty relaxed.
If it wasn't for the insect bites covering his body, rescuers say it would be hard to believe Ian Graham spent more than a week stuck in an East Kimberly bog, with only his pet labrador Missy for company.
It's fair to say - as far as survivors of such ordeals go - that the ingenious 38-year-old didn't do it too tough.
Graham and Missy had not long polished off an ample meal of freshly caught fish, washed down with some rainwater he had collected, when help arrived.
And rescuers were stunned to see the rather elaborate camp he had created using bits from the four-wheel-drive that had landed him in trouble in the first place.
"He pulled the bonnet off and was using it for shelter and he'd pulled the seats out, which he was using as a makeshift bed," said Sergeant Graham Sears, of Western Australia's Kununurra police.
"He was catching water from the rainfall, I don't know how ... and he was catching fish to eat.
"He managed to get himself a fire started. He kept that going and he cooked himself up a fish.
"Ian was feeding the dog with what he caught."
Graham and his dog were finally found at Cape Domett yesterday, 70km from where police believed he had gone fishing in the Keep River National Park on December 7.
Graham, an electrical linesman from Kununurra, slept in the shanty he fashioned from parts stripped from his 4WD after it failed to start following a full day of fishing that day.
The vehicle then got bogged in by tidal movements, Sears said.
Graham's partner Lana Penny raised the alarm when he failed to return, and at one point said she feared a croc had eaten him.
All the while, Graham was safe in his lean-to at Cape Domett.
The only problem was he had told Penny he was headed to Keep River, mistakenly believing Cape Domett was part of that area.
After much angst and a lot of searching, a helicopter hired by Graham's brother finally found him.
"He was very happy to be home and very happy to be reunited with his family," Spears said. "Medically, he got bitten by a few midgies while he was out there, but apart from that he is fit and healthy."
- AAP
