WA: Last ditch effort to find American missing in desert

AAP General News (Australia)
08-06-1999
WA: Last ditch effort to find American missing in desert

By Paul Ruffini

PERTH, Aug 6 AAP - Searchers have set up a base camp in Western Australia's Great Sandy
Desert in a last ditch effort to find a missing American adventurer whose survival chances are
dwindling by the day.

Senior Sergeant Geoff Fuller from Broome police, who is coordinating the search, said
police would look at abandoning the 11-day search for Robert Bogucki, 33, on Monday.

Police have refused to detail the cost of the search which involved hiring a helicopter
costing $600 a hour. It has spent at least 12 hours in the air searching.

"If the public start saying 'well, hang on, this is costing me too much money, this is
bullshit' I think that's my call whether we continue or not," he said.

"I don't like paying huge amounts of money out but I'd like to find this fellow.

"But it will get to the stage, and it probably won't be a long way off, that we'll be
making a judgment call on whether we go any further".

Snr Sgt Fuller said Monday morning was likely to be the cut-off time if no trace of Mr
Bogucki is found this weekend.

The search for Mr Bogucki, a truck driver and volunteer fireman from Fairbanks, Alaska, was
launched after his bike, food, water and camping gear were found abandoned on a track at the
start of the Great Sandy Desert on July 26.

He'd written to his parents in California telling them of his plans to cross the desert and
emerge at Fitzroy Crossing or Halls Creek.

Seven four-wheel drive vehicles with a dozen searchers today set-up at a base camp 280km
east of the Great Northern Highway on the McLarty Track where Mr Bogucki's tracks were last
seen.

The vehicles are carrying extra fuel to search a 600 square kilometre area south of the
base camp where police have deduced that Mr Bogucki is most likely to be, Snr Sgt Fuller said.

The area is crisscrossed by hundreds of now overgrown seismic tracks left over from oil
exploration in the area.

"He has to have been there in the last week for us to find him," Snr Sgt Fuller said.

"We're trying to close in on him by working our way down the seismic tracks".

The searchers believe Mr Bogucki is now in serious trouble.

Local opinion is that the trek he set himself was impossible, but more worryingly, if he
was near completing it, he would have made contact with Aboriginal communities six days east
of where his tracks were last seen, Snr Sgt Fuller said.

"If he's still alive he'd be getting a bit toey now," he said.

"He's in the back of beyond and he's all by himself. We're now obviously extremely
concerned for his welfare".

Planes would also continue to search the area.

AAP pr/arb

KEYWORD: CYCLIST

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