Ben Fogle meets family surviving 'pressure cooker' life in middle of desert
The TV presenter journeyed deep into the Australian wilderness to meet zoologist couple who credit their strength of their marriage for getting them through.
What did you miss?
Ben Fogle met a zoologist couple who credit their marriage with helping them survive living in the remote Australian desert.
In the latest episode of his Channel 5 show New Lives In The Wild, on Tuesday, 4 February, Fogle journeyed deep into the Australian wilderness to meet married zoologists Bec and Reece and their three children, Isla, Zac and Edwin.
Bec told Fogle that surviving the "pressure cooker" of their remote life working on the conservation project and home-schooling their kids made her think she "picked a good husband."
What, how, and why?
Reece and Bec boast being the "most remote family in New South Wales", living in a former sheep station at Fort Grey in the middle a national park in the Sturt Desert, where they have volunteered to manage 86,000 acres while working on a conservation project. They have been living 450km from the nearest town for eight years. As he journeyed out to meet them, Fogle said: "Part of me feels as though I've landed on another planet. I also feel very alone."
Rebecca was born in Cheshire in the north of England where her father ran a zoo. Her family moved to Australia when she was 24, and while studying zoology she met Australian-born Reece.
Speaking to Fogle about the pressures of living so remotely and working on the conservation project with Reece, Bec admitted: "There's moments where we feel overwhelmed. I guess we live in a bit of a pressure cooker, you know, we live together, we work together, we're raising the kids all the time together, and so yeah, I think it sets out to the strength of our relationship. It makes me think I've picked a good husband because we've survived that."
The couple revealed that when they first moved out to Fort Grey they found themselves living through a drought so hot they felt they were "living on Mars". In 2018 the estimated 8,000 kangaroos died in their area of the desert, as they worked to try and reintroduce endangered native species to the wild.
Bec confessed: "It makes you feel very, very useless. That was the year in the summer when we thought, 'What have we done?', and, is there ever going to be any rain again? And we actually had a whole other year after that before it did rain. Yeah, every time they announce that El Nino's back, which for us here in Australia means drier years, I do start to worry, yep."
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What else happened on Ben Fogle's New Lives In The Wild?
Bec trained to be a paramedic before moving out into the desert. While they have access to the Flying Doctor, they also have a lock-up pharmacy chest for emergencies, after getting a prescription approved by a GP.
Bec explained: "We've got methoxyflurane for pain relief, things like ibuprofen, some oxacillin, things like that. We've had some antibiotics for one of the kids. If we hadn't had that, it would have been a 900 kilometer trip to go and get that medication from Broken Hill. It makes me feel safer anyway, even though there are moments where you still feel vulnerable."
The mother-of three confessed she does worry about the safety of her young children if they were to need medical assistance, living so remotely. She said: "I think often for me if there's heavy rain, and then the kids are doing something like climbing on a table, I do have a moment where I think, so if someone breaks a leg, how are we actually gonna get medical help? Because you can't drive on the roads, the plane can't land."
Ben Fogle's New Lives In The Wild is available to stream on My5.