A 75-year-old who built a mattress out of tree branches and wrote a message for rescuers in the sand has been found after spending a night lost and alone on Western Australia's vast Nullarbor Plain.
Sergeant Dale Grice, the officer in charge of the Eucla Police Station, said the man was travelling from Perth to visit family in Tasmania when he pulled into the Eyre Bird Observatory on Sunday.
The observatory, described online as "one of the least populated places on the planet", is about 35 kilometres south of the Eyre Highway along a sandy four-wheel drive track and about 300 kilometres west of the South Australian border.
Sergeant Grice said the traveller had a quick look around the museum and homestead, before leaving at about 2pm.
The observatory's volunteer caretaker, Mick, saw the man's car was still parked outside and guessed he had then gone on a walk.
But he became concerned when it was still parked there three hours later.
Search begins
Sergeant Grice said police were notified at about 5pm and two officers were sent from Eucla, about a three-and-a-half-hour drive away.
"We've made an assessment of the general situation: the weather, the time that he'd been gone, the terrain in the area," he said.
"And of the danger posed to that gentleman.
"[We] assessed that it was a reasonably high risk."
As police and State Emergency Services from Norseman, Kalgoorlie and Esperance travelled to help join the search, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority jet was sent from the east coast to search for the man with heat-sensing technology.
It proved successful – detecting the man in a makeshift camp and passing coordinates onto Eucla Police, who met him on the ground at about 6:20am Monday morning.
According to the Bureau of Meteorology, it was 1.9 degree Celsius at Eyre at 6am Monday.
"He was relieved," Sergeant Grice said.
"He has said to the guys that he knew someone would come.
"He was an experienced bushman. He was an ex-farmer and he also used to work for the Parks Department in Tasmania.
"So he was well experienced in bushcraft."
Survival skills on show
He said the man's outdoor capabilities were evident during the search, with police coming across a note written in the ground, stating the time and an arrow showing the direction he was walking.
He also set up a camp, using bushes and shrubs.
"He's set up a mattress using those and then he's made himself a bit of a blanket out of them to cover himself," Sergeant Grice said.
He said the man had become disoriented when visiting the beach near the observatory and taken the wrong path back.
"It's pretty remote area there," Sergeant Grice said.
"So it's easy to be done."
But he urged others to always let another person know before going on a walk, particularly in isolated parts of the country.
"If the caretakers at Eyre Bird [Observatory] hasn't been so observant and reported the matter … this gentleman would have become even more lost," he said.
"And that would have made our search area absolutely massive."
Despite being alone for about 15 hours, they said the "very fit and able" 75-year-old was in a good condition.
Sergeant Grice said police offered to take him to hospital, but he declined and continued his travels.
