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Expedition finds bogged vehicle

The landcruiser cab was excavated down to confirm the certificate of registration on the windscreen.

After reading about The Kimberley Echo's famed Bog of the Wet competition recently, former Kimberley police officer Bob Brown penned this account of finding a vehicle bogged up to its roof during his time on the beat in Derby during the 1970s.

In the 1970s, an Aboriginal elder walked into the Derby Police Station and told a story of trying to drive into Pantijan Cattle Station the previous wet season.

The man said while crossing a swollen creek, his new ute had become swamped and he was lucky to escape with his life.

Isolated and with few provisions, he said he was forced to walk several hundred kilometres to the north of Derby near Walcott Inlet.

The man said on his journey he came across two white men camped by a creek and decided to sit off a safe distance and observe.

At the camp, the man said he saw a small compound, inside which were a number of marijuana plants.

When the men rode off on motorcycles, the man said he removed a cannabis plant, which he later presented at the station.

The man continued on his trek to Pantijan and many months passed before he could make the return journey to Derby to inform police.

On the way back, he noticed the camp had been abandoned and where his vehicle had been bogged, he found it had all but disappeared.

No police vehicle patrol had ever ventured into this inhospitable part of the Kimberley and Derby police did not have a four-wheel-drive vehicle.

However, police did have a good relationship with the Agricultural Protection Board, part of the WA Government's Agricultural Department.

In their line of work they needed an intimate knowledge of the country and importantly, were equipped with Toyota LandCruiser wagons.

I was lucky enough to win the job of investigating the campsite and Carl Drysdale, a district officer with the APB, jumped at the chance to mount a joint patrol.

We set off, and the initial trip to Mount Elizabeth Station was uneventful.

As a courtesy, we called on station owner Peter Lacy and his family and he warned of recent unseasonal rains.

He told us to take the high ground as the black soil was treacherous.

The hand winch got a hammering over the next 100km, which took us three days.

We spent many an exhausting hour covered in mud, dragging ourselves through seemingly bottomless, clinging black soil.

In fact we had broken all the winch shear pins and it was only by turning them 90 degrees and reusing them that we managed to press on.

But press on we did, even though we considered the wise choice was to turn back.

When we eventually broached a river bank, there before us was part of the cab of a Toyota LandCruiser protruding from the river bed.

Digging down to the certificate of registration on the windscreen we found it was a whole vehicle, confirming the story we had heard.

Moving on, we reached the abandoned campsite which was in a state of decay, but largely as described by the man.

Nothing much could be achieved apart from taking photographs and notes and collecting evidence.

Among it, we did find a letter written in French.

Having come so far, and with APB business to conclude, we ventured on an extremely rugged but navigable track.

On the return trip, we called in with the people running Pantijan Station, then headed back towards Gibb River Road, avoiding the worst of the black soil for, as Mr Lacy had told us, "keep to the high ground" - it was a lesson hard learnt.

After returning to Derby, I had the letter translated.

From the letter we determined one of the men was a geologist and, before establishing his camp, he had worked for an exploration company undertaking helicopter geological field work in the same area.

The drug crop was too small to be of commercial value and was probably grown for personal use.

However, because of the passage of time and international boundaries, it was decided to let the matter rest, and forever remain a mystery.