Ricky Megee was on a journey through the Australian Outback, heading towards a new job and potentially a fresh start in life, when he decided to offer a lift to a hitchhiker.

However, this act of kindness by the 35-year-old turned into a nightmarish experience as Mr Megee was drugged and abandoned in one of the world’s most unforgiving environments, a mystery that still ranks among Australia’s most bizarre and contentious unsolved cases.

In 2006, a group of young “jackaroos”, or cattle farmhands, stumbled upon a shocking sight in the Outback – a skeletal and malnourished man wandering alone in the desolate desert.

The farm’s head, Mark Clifford, later referred to the figure as “a walking skeleton”. This was Ricky Megee who had vanished without a trace 10 weeks earlier while travelling from Brisbane, Queensland, to Port Hedland, Western Australia for his new job.

Mr Megee’s past was fraught with difficulties. His father had taken his own life when Megee was just a child, and he had been incarcerated several times in subsequent years for street fighting and drug use.

A habitual wanderer, Mr Megee saw Port Hedland as an opportunity for a fresh start. However, to reach there, he would have to navigate 3000km of perilous Outback, including the Tanami Desert, known as one of the “most isolated places in Australia”, reports the Mirror.

Unfazed, Mr Megee embarked on the epic journey in his reliable 2001 Mitsubishi Challenger, a drive that would take him two to three days in total.

During his journey, however, things took a turn for the worse. Mr Megee has never been entirely sure what happened.

Initially, he claimed his vehicle had broken down. Later, he told journalists he had given a lift to an Aboriginal hitchhiker who drugged his drink, leaving him confused and stranded.

Mr Megee altered his account once more in his 2010 autobiography, co-written with writer and film director Greg McLean. McLean was particularly known for his 2005 horror film Wolf Creek, which followed three backpackers being pursued across the Outback by serial killer Mick Taylor.

In this version, Mr Megee says he encountered three men at the roadside who claimed to have run out of petrol and requested a lift for one of them. During the journey, the hitchhiker either drugged Megee’s drink or injected him with a syringe filled with drugs, leaving him “dazed and confused”.

When Mr Megee regained consciousness, he discovered himself at his attackers’ camp. They were carrying weapons and removed Mr Megee’s shoes but still provided him with water and left his money untouched.

Eventually, they vanished, abandoning Mr Megee in a makeshift grave beneath black tarp. Mr Megee claims he awoke to four dingoes scratching at his body, seeking an easy meal.

However, whichever version of events was accurate, the result was identical. Mr Megee found himself desperately stranded in the desert for 71 days with no knowledge of his location.

He walked for 10 days through agonising heat that routinely surpassed 40°C, collapsing from heat exhaustion on numerous occasions. In his autobiography, he said: “It was hard, desolate country for a man all alone in bare feet. Nevertheless, I started to walk. And walk. The more I walked, I figured, the less distance I’d have to travel to get found. It was faulty logic, but it was the best I could come up with.”

To stay alive, Mr Megee consumed snakes, ants, lizards, frogs and grasshoppers, foraging during the evening when temperatures were more bearable. He also managed to locate small dams and waterholes where he could access drinking water and catch leeches, which provided another vital food source. He consumed them raw.

When water wasn’t available, he resorted to drinking his own urine or attempting to collect morning dew. He typically ate the small creatures he caught uncooked, but would “fry” the frogs he captured by skewering them on wire and leaving them to dry in the sun.

He said he would allow them to become “a bit crispy” before eating them.

He also constructed makeshift shelters to escape the blistering heat during the day and the freezing cold at night. Initially he used branches, then discovered a dilapidated windmill and created a “humpy” (a type of shelter used by Aboriginal people) from an abandoned cattle trough.

At one stage, Mr Megee developed an abscess in his tooth, a condition which could rapidly have proved fatal given his weakened physical condition. But determined not to succumb, he extracted the infected tooth from his mouth using his car keys.

When Mr Megee was eventually discovered, the 6ft2 man weighed a mere 7 stone, or 99lbs, having previously tipped the scales at 230lbs. He was promptly airlifted to the Royal Darwin Hospital in the Northern Territory, where medical staff described him as emaciated but surprisingly well hydrated.

His car was never recovered and his captors were never found. Just six days later, he was discharged from the hospital.

However, as news of Mr Megee’s story spread, doubts began to surface. The Sydney Herald speculated that the tale had been concocted and expressed “some doubts” about its authenticity, reporting that Mr Megee was attempting to sell his story to “a commercial television station”.

ABC Radio later reported he had given them his story free of charge, albeit only after unsuccessfully asking them to match an £11,000 offer he claimed to have received from another unnamed group. The police also reportedly “had doubts about the story because of Megee’s previous minor drug convictions”, but dismissed suggestions of criminal wrongdoing on his part.

The hospital staff were similarly sceptical, with the doctor who treated him stating it was “very difficult to either deny or validate” his story due to the unexpected speed of his recovery.

Despite the scepticism, Mr Megee maintained his account and attributed his survival to his longing to see his friends and family again. He stated: “People need to understand what I have been through. To have survived out there for so long and then be told I made it all up makes me sick.”

He further added: “Before, I was a bit blasé about life, but now I cherish it everyday.”

While his survival appears miraculous, Les Hiddins, an expert in outback survival, said it isn’t that surprising. He suggested people can survive off the wilderness of the outback for up to three years and pointed out that Mr Megee had disappeared during the rainy season, which would have made water more accessible.

Mr Megee currently resides in Dubai, where he oversees a construction team. He aspires to do aid work in Africa one day, believing there is a greater purpose behind his survival.

He said: “I just think I didn’t die for a reason, and I’m able to help other people.”