Perth man Reg Foggerdy, 62, had been lost for six days before Robin Smythe saw footprints in the sand, which rescuers followed to find him under a tree

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

A bushman who got lost in the Western Australian desert for six days was found after an Aboriginal elder spotted his footprint in the sand.

Reginald Foggerdy, 62, had been on a hunting trip with his brother when he followed a camel alone and became lost near the Shooter’s Shack camp, about 170km east of Laverton in the Goldfields region.

Missing Perth man Reg Foggerdy survived in desert for six days by eating ants Read more

When it became clear he was missing last Wednesday, an immediate land and air search was launched.

Aboriginal elder Robin Smythe, from the Cosmo Newberry community, was part of a team doing a heritage survey with Gold Road Resources last Saturday when he spotted a thong footprint. Authorities traced the footprints and found Foggerdy on Tuesday morning under a tree, about 15km from where he went missing.

“We knew that Reg was only wearing thongs, so we put two and two together and figured, yeah well, it’s got to be him,” the exploration services manager, Shaun Richardson, told ABC radio on Wednesday.

Richardson said it was remarkable Smythe had seen the footprint because it was fading.

“They were a little over three days old and they were getting a little bit wind-blown, and as you can imagine, a pair of thongs don’t leave a very big imprint in the sand,” he said.

“Lucky it was the desert sand because if he was on rocky terrain we wouldn’t have seen any prints at all.”

Richardson said it was a coincidence the group was there to discover the footprint.

“They [Aboriginal elders] read the land like a book – they see things I can’t see and it just blows me away,” he said.

The team split up so they could continue their work, while also tracking the steps for a couple of kilometres, and passed on what they had found to authorities.

Kasey Murray, her brother, Harvey Murray Junior, and cousin, Gavin Murray, from the Yilka tribe, were part of the group that stayed to track Foggerdy on foot, walking for five kilometres and marking footprints they saw by tying the pink ribbon they were carrying to mark heritage sites around spinifex bushes.

“We could tell as we went along that he was getting tired and dragging his gun,” Murray told Guardian Australia.

“We spread out and someone would call out, ‘hey, we found something over here!’ and we would go to that point and pick up the trail together again.”

“We actually met him near Shooters Shack on Tuesday so it was almost personal for us. We were shocked when they found him alive – he is very lucky to survive on ants.”

Richardson said the water holes had dried up and Foggerdy had no supplies, so he had “written him off” and was amazed at his survival story.

The experienced bushman was extremely dehydrated and slightly delusional when rescuers arrived, but police said Foggerdy managed to stay alive by eating black ants.

Foggerdy has yet to speak publicly about his ordeal and is recovering at Kalgoorlie hospital.

His sister Christine Ogden says his throat is so sore he cannot speak well.