British TV host Jeremy Wade, presenter of ‘River Monsters’, and his crew were searching the waters of Barranyi North Island in the Northern Territory for some exotic fish when they stumbled upon a castaway fisherman in need of rescue.
Wade and his five-man crew were around the collection of islands 750 kilometers south-east of Darwin when they spotted a half-naked man waving his hands in the air from a cave on the shore of a small uninhabited stretch of land.
According to reports it seems the stranded man, known as Tremine, had become stuck on the island a few days prior after he lost sight of his boat when he came ashore and was just hours from dehydrating to death having been trapped in temperatures upward of 43 degrees without water.
Stephen Shearman, the director of the episode “Death Down Under,” told Inside Edition the man was “preparing to die” after he became land locked on the barren strip, surrounded by crocodile infested waters.
“He had said his last prayer,” Shearman told InsideEdition.com. “He was prepared to die and meet his maker.”
The film crew was on assignment in the region to unscramble the mystery of six men who died in a plane crash near to the Gulf of Carpentaria and weren’t even going to shoot in that area but the waters of their original location proved too choppy.
“Together, we spotted this blue Esky, or cooler box, that was just sat on the rock,” Shearman said of the rescue.
Beforehand the men on board the boat were supposedly making jokes about Tom Hanks, making reference to the 2000 movie, Cast Away.
But suddenly, Shearman said, “this guy with no clothes was running out of the cave, waving his arms out.”
Shearman pointed out that man from Borroloola, a town about 50 km upstream from the Gulf of Carpentaria, was no novice to fishing alone but even the most experienced men can quickly succumb to the elements as the human body can only survive for up to 72 hours without water – Tremine had been out there for 60 hours already.
“Everything was fine, and within two to three hours, everything wasn’t really fine at all,” Shearman said. “In his own words, he was ‘preparing to die.'”
“He had tried to walk back, got beaten by the sun, and made his way back to the beach,” Shearman said.
“Meanwhile, he had suffered from sunstroke and was unable to go any further. He then spent that first night on the beach, and the next morning he tried again, but the sun had gotten to be too much for him, and at this point, he is now trapped.”
But thankfully he was rescued and “apart from a bruised pride, he was back to normal,” making a full recovery very quickly. Apparently not losing his sense of humour in the process.
Sherman gleefully remarked: “He’s given up smoking, but he’s promised God he’s going to start smoking again. If he had a lighter, he’d be able to cook, and he’d have a fire.”
