Stuck in the dense, unforgiving bushland of NSW’s 6920-hectare Mount Royal National Park, there was one promise Michelle Pittman made to her nine-year-old son Dylan that kept them going for 10 days.
“If he didn’t make it, we both didn’t make it, and I would do everything in my power to make sure that didn’t happen,” she said.
‘Dylan was my driving force. We just had sheer determination, willpower and so much love.’
Michelle Pittman and her son Dylan got lost during a bush walk during a long weekend in October 2017
A shared decision to go bushwalking in the national park, 133km north of Newcastle, over an October long weekend in 2017 quickly led to them getting lost. What looked like a trail through a stream turned into clumps of red cedar, eucalyptus gum, and bushes.
“It’s so close and nothing looks the same even though it’s all bush,” she said.
‘You just knew you had never come across the same place you had been. Nothing was ever known.’
By day two, Mrs Pittman, now 46, knew they were in trouble.
“We hiked all day the next day and realized the bush was really deceiving,” she said.
The pair were left wandering in the dense bushland of NSW’s 6920 hectare Mount Royal National Park without food or water
Investigators eventually found a “piece of paper” Ms Pittman had left at home listing places they visited, with her car located in Mount Royal National Park
‘It was really scary because a million things were going through my head. I was worried about warmth, shelter, what would happen if it rained.’
For 10 days, the couple only licked water off the back of the leaves and a miraculous ‘crystal clear’ puddle on the ninth day, when both Mrs Pittman and Dylan struggled with severe dehydration.
The food was also non-existent. As Mrs. Pittman tried to eat a leaf early on, she spat it out for fear of choking.
Inspired by bush survival expert Bear Grylls, Ms Pittman also drank her own urine on the fourth day.
‘I’m glad because I got my period the next day,’ she laughs.
Friends and family wrote widely about the pair’s disappearance, with the duo located and rescued 10 harrowing days later after a decision to change tactics
‘I lost it then. I was like, ‘Are you kidding me? I’m already in a challenging situation, why is this happening?’
Struggling with yet another obstacle, she used her car keys to make a makeshift pillow with her T-shirt before just giving up.
‘By the third day I didn’t even care anymore. Just do what you have to, I thought, she said.
Back home, friends and family began circulating images on social media, with the SES, NSW Police and Ambulance and National Parks and Wildlife staff launching a large-scale ground search.
Although no one knew of her plans, investigators eventually found a “piece of paper” that Mrs. Pittman had left at home with a list of places they visited.
Crucially, at the bottom was Mount Royal National Park, where detectives drove in and found her car.
As a rescue operation raced against time in an attempt to find Mrs. Pittman and Dylan, the couple battled against the unknown.
She says the nights were the hardest when the anxiety, stress and cold seeped into their bones, making their teeth ache from shaking.
They were also only dressed for a warm spring day. Mrs Pittman was wearing a T-shirt and capri jeans, which she swapped with her son’s shorts to give him more coverage.
‘It was so scary. We heard so many noises but we couldn’t see anything. Our bodies hurt from shaking,” she said.
‘The nights felt so long and when it started to get dark the reality would set in that we were lost again.’
The decision to leave the mountain and ‘go low’ to find water led them to stumble onto a road on the 11th day and ultimately they were rescued
On day eight, she woke up to Dylan ‘turning purple’ due to severe dehydration. At the time, her plan was to climb the mountain to make it easier for the couple to be spotted by charter planes; however, water sources were scarce.
‘Because we were awake a lot at night, because it was so cold, we could try to sleep through the day. I said to Dylan, ‘Let’s lay down and when I woke up he was this purple blue color and I was just screaming’.
‘I thought that was it, but he moved up when I screamed. I knew then that we had to move.’
She changed tactics. Their plan was now to leave the mountain and go ‘low down’ to find water.
On the eleventh day, Dylan was the first to notice that their dirt and twig path had turned to asphalt and gravel, not long before the pair were found by an oncoming police car
The decision also led to them stumbling onto a road on the 11th day. Dehydrated, delirious and stumbling ‘like zombies’, it was Dylan who first noticed that their dirt and twig path had turned to tarmac and gravel.
“He stopped me because we were holding hands and it took me a few seconds to realize we were out,” she said.
‘We just screamed, hugged each other and cried.
‘I knew it, I kept my promise. Right at that moment I knew.’
As she passed a cabin, she realized they were walking down the road they had driven into the park from.
A few dozen steps later, they were found by an oncoming police car.
‘They both knew exactly who we were. They pulled up and said ‘we’ve been looking for you’ and that was it.’
Acclimating back to the real world was also a challenge. After 11 days of walking, Mrs Pittman’s legs gave out as soon as they were rescued, with both her and Dylan ravaged by scratches, cuts and tick bites.
‘I remember Dylan asking the nurses why I couldn’t walk and I’m really glad they jumped in and said, ‘Mom worked her body so hard and now she just needs to rest,'” said she.
“You don’t know what you’re capable of until that moment, and I would have kept going as long as it took.”
In the long term, it would take her around 18 months for Mrs Pittman to be able to walk without her legs tingling.
They also became afraid of the dark and struggled with loud environments.
‘I would never go anywhere. I just didn’t want to be around people, she said.
‘Those 10 days felt like years and it was like we hadn’t been around people for a long, long time.
Mrs Pittman has now written a book, aptly titled Lost, about their ordeal and says it was a way of coping in the years after the 10-day nightmare
‘When I started going out because it was part of my counseling process, I hid behind my sunglasses. It felt like they were my invisibility cloak.’
The singleton woman has now written a book, aptly titled Lost, about their ordeal. She says it was a way of coping in the years after the 10-day nightmare.
Surprisingly, the ordeal hasn’t completely put them off the bush. But now they are more prepared.
“We make sure to go to places that are busy – like the Three Sisters in Katoomba,” she said.
‘We make sure we have a rucksack on us and that it’s packed.
‘Learning from that time, we also know that the first thing to do is to let someone know where we’re going.’
Lost: The True Story of How a Mother and Son’s Weekend Adventure Turned into a Fight for Survival was published by Bermingham Books and is available from Amazon in both paperback and Kindle formats and from selected booksellers.