Last updated at 16:22 14 April 2008

He walked naked through the Australian outback and died without clothes in a canoe in the jungle - but it was learned yesterday that the so-called 'Naked Nomad' had left behind a £2 million fortune.

Eccentric Victor Flanagan wandered the sun-scorched roads of Australia without a stitch of clothing, slipping on a simple sarong when he entered towns, a curious figure with shoulder-length greying hair who had rejected civilisation.

Everyone believed he was penniless, but it has now been revealed that Mr Flanagan had left behind land worth £2 million near Busselton, in Western Australia.

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Loner: Victor Flanagan on the road Port Augusta, South Australia, in 1995

He had inherited the property from his father.

Now the home has been awarded to his sister, Violent Jenkins, by a judge who decided that the naked and dying white man found in a canoe in the tropical wilds of Papua New Guinea was Mr Flanagan - even though he had not been formally identified.

Mrs Jenkins told the West Australian Supreme Court, in a hearing to decide whether Mr Flanagan should be declared dead and his estate should be passed to her, that she last spoke to her brother in 1996 while he was living in Papua New Guinea, north of Australia.

He had moved there, she said, after years of wandering naked around outback Australia.

Her research into her brother's movements had led her to speak to loggers at a remote camp in Papua New Guinea. They told her they had found a naked man close to death in a canoe and descriptions of him had led her to believe he was her brother.

She learned the man had been buried in a mass grave in the Papua New Guinea town of Lae, where other unidentified people had been interred.

Supreme Court Judge Andrew Beech ruled that it was 'fair to say' that Mr Flanagan, who would have turned 57 this year, was dead.

"It is to be expected that he would have been in contact with Mrs Jenkins if he were still alive' said the judge.

He once told reporters: 'My goal is simply to be in touch with nature," he said.

"I want to spend the rest of my life as a nomad, not owning land or food or anything individually but collectively owning it and sharing it with everyone in the universe."