Megee made his own primitive shelters and survived by drinking rainwater and eating small animals and available vegetation for nourishment.

Although some doubts were later raised as to the exact chain of events as Megee related them, the police did not find evidence that a criminal offence had occurred.

Ricky Megee was born in 1970 or 1971 in Gippsland, Victoria; he later described his childhood as a happy one, until the family moved to Melbourne, where his father later killed himself.

[6] Driving a 2001 Mitsubishi Challenger[3] he took the Buntine Highway, which for much of his journey was a desert track[2] across the outback of the Northern Territory.

He first told his rescuers that his car had broken down,[5] but then, The Washington Post reported, he claimed "that he had been drugged by hitchhikers and left for dead".

[7] Megee later elaborated on how this scenario unfolded, saying he had picked up a lone Aboriginal[5] hitchhiker between the towns of Kalkaringi and Halls Creek.

When combined with the abundance of small wild animals and Megee's "hardy constitution", his chances of survival were, with hindsight, actually relatively good.

[13] He drank water from "various dams and waterholes" and scavenged in the bush[3] every evening, eating "only one meal a day, just enough to stay alive".

[1] Megee—"baked in the day and frozen at night"[13]—created temporary shelters from the sun out of old branches, and eventually found a decrepit windmill.

[1] Megee said that he made "a little humpy[note 1] out of a feed trough that was at some cattle yards, obviously a mustering point, I thought to myself, so I've dragged it up on top of the dam, flipped it over and dug a hole and just lived in there for 10 weeks.

[13] Megee refuted allegations that his account was in any way misleading and even offered to appear live on television and eat frogs to prove he was telling the truth.

[2] ABC Radio reported that Megee had told his story to them for free—although only after trying, unsuccessfully, to persuade the station to match a A$15,000 offer he said he had received from elsewhere.

[15] The doctor who treated Megee in Darwin commented that it was "very difficult to either deny or validate" his story, as he had responded so well to the treatment provided by dieticians, nutritionists and physicians.