Early in January of 1992 a thin, hungry and very weary man was found by station workers stumbling through open bush in one of the most isolated parts of the Australian continent. Conditions were unbearable with early afternoon temperatures around 47°C, humidity 85 per cent and monsoonal storms beginning to build. He carried no water and the nearest ‘civilisation’ was one of northwestern Australia's remotest cattle stations 25 km away. The badly dehydrated man was taken to the station and when sufficiently recovered he told his rescuers he was not alone. He had left companions to make their way in small groups across the baking harshness of the rocky Mitchell Plateau. He was walking across one of the harshest and least explored areas of Australia that stretches for thousands of square kilometres. Without knowing the cattle station was there he would have missed it altogether.

One by one the man's companions were found and when they had partially recovered from their exhaustion they related their story. They had been walking for days over the rugged, scrubby terrain with hardly any water and little food except some flour and a few lizards and snakes that they had caught on the way. They had no knowledge of bush foods, no weapons and no previous experience with the Australian bush or that type of environment. The unfamiliar landscape and conditions were doubly hard for them because they had entered this harsh wilderness at its worst, during the extreme mid-summer monsoon.