fork out of reach of crocodiles, although he shared the tree with a brown tree snake. At one point, he shot a crocodile, whose head he kept as a souvenir. Ansell never counted on being rescued; he had told others he would be away for months, and any search parties would be combing over the Victoria River, not the Fitzmaurice. He rested his hope on walking overland to a pastoral station when the wet season began. One day, Ansell heard the distinctive tinkling of horse-bells, which drew him to two Aboriginal stockmen and their cattle manager, Luke McCall. Although he was somewhat emaciated, Ansell was otherwise healthy. Once back home, he apparently kept his seven-week ordeal to himself, fearing he would upset his mother with his recklessness. He later claimed the experience was hardly a big deal, explaining:All the blokes up in this country, who work with cattle, ringers, stockmen, bull-catches, whatever, all of them, have really narrow shaves all the time. But they never talk about it...I think the opinion is that if you come through in one piece, and you're still alive, then nothing else really matters. It's like going out to shoot a kangaroo. You don't come back and say you missed by half-an-inch. You either got him or you didn't. So that is how I looked at it. Until the paper got hold of the story, and that changed a lot of things. Newspapers dubbed Ansell the "modern-day Robinson Crusoe" and he was making headlines by August 1977. Media attention In 1977, after becoming a sensation in the Australian media following his harrowing ordeal in the Outback, Ansell met Joanne van Os, 22, a radio operator originally from Melbourne who was then working at the remote Aboriginal community of Wadeye. The two fell in love and married, having two sons: Callum (born 1979) and Shawn (born 1981). The family spent much of their early years living "under just a canvas sheet." With no electricity or running water, they cooked by campfire and communicated by radio. In 1979, filmmaker Richard Oxenburgh asked Ansell to relive his adventures in the documentary film To Fight the Wild, which the following year was published as a book. Although both accepted Ansell's version of events uncritically, his story was frequently treated with skepticism by locals in the Top End. Some believed it was a publicity stunt and others wondered why Ansell