Bushman and survivalist Michael Fomenko’s wild journey

HE WAS known as Tarzan. King of the Coral Sea. The Wild White Man of North Queensland. One thing is for sure, this rumoured blue-blood son of a white Russian princess and one-time champion decathlete, lived an extraordinary life.

HE WAS known as Tarzan. King of the Coral Sea. The Wild White Man of north Queensland.

Michael Peter Fomenko – the rumoured blue-blood son of a white Russian princess and one-time champion decathlete – lived an extraordinary life.

The legendary 88-year-old expert bushman and survivalist died in a Babinda nursing home earlier this month.

Michael Fomenko in his leopard-print jocks lived as a hermit in north Queensland.

But it was his six decades spent living rough in the jungles of Cape York, the Daintree and Deeral that captivated the minds of countless thousands – making him a totemic figure of folklore in far north Queensland. To see him in the flesh, was like a glimpse of Neolithic Man.

His body tanned, leathery and wrinkled was hardened by a lifetime battling the elements.

He hunted wild boar, snake, possum and crocodile with a large Bowie knife, scrounged for food, loped barefoot through the bush in a fast running stride, and wore little but a loin cloth or leopard-print jocks.

His epic 800km journey paddling a hand-carved dugout canoe – described as more akin to a hollow tree log, outrigger and a sail made of coconut husks – from Cooktown to Dutch New Guinea and back in 1959 first won him unwanted fame.

“Why all the fuss?’’ the “Aussie Tarzan” asked journalists, as his solo two-year voyage made international headlines.

“I have renounced what you call civilisation,’’ he reportedly said.

“This is my paradise of peace and personal endeavour. I want the life I have been living, otherwise I will only be half alive.’’

Famed bushman and survivalist Michael Fomenko. Picture: Michael Watt

His father Daniel, a learned scholar, once explained why his son, who was educated at Sydney’s elite Shore Grammar school and touted as a possible contender to represent Australia in the decathlon at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, had “gone native”.

“Michael is obsessed with the character of the wanderer, warrior and athlete, Odysseus,’’ Fomenko said. As an infant, Michael and his family had survived the long march to freedom out of Stalinist Russia through Siberia into Manchuria in the 1930s, living in Japan for six years, and emigrating to Australia before World War II.

His sister Innessa Fomenko, aged 91, of Armidale in NSW, told The Courier-Mail his exploits in the wild were inspired by a love of Homer’s poetry, their early childhood in Japan, and a Tarzan film, starring Johnny Weissmuller.

Michael Fomenko with his hand-carved dugout canoe.

“He loved Homer’s poetry, all those stories about the ancient Greek heroes,” she said. “I think so many were captivated by his life because he had the grit and courage to do what he loved. He starved, he hunted, and had a really hard physical life. But he loved the bush and the open sea, he loved being alone and at one with nature. But it was also very difficult for him because he was always pursued and persecuted by the authorities and the press.’’

Police escort Michael Fomenko at the Mayne Junction railway station in 1964.

Police repeatedly arrested him for vagrancy, sent him to a mental asylum several times, and he was given electro shock therapy.

Historian Peter Ryle, who compiled the book, Michael “Tarzan” Fomenko: The Man Who Dared to Live His Own Exotic Dream, said the eccentric hermit was an oddity to mainstream society.

“He’s a bloke who had the guts to live the life he wanted to live. Not many do. Not many of us are game.

“There’s nothing romantic about getting eaten alive by sandflies and mosquitoes, sleeping rough, scrounging for food.

“Some thought he must have been mentally wrong to do that, they thought he must have been mad, but he was found to be perfectly sane.”

The Courier-Mail was one of a few papers to twice interview Fomenko in his later years in Cairns where he was sometimes seen trekking bare-chested, with a potato sack over the shoulder, along the Bruce Highway.

He told me of his dream to again build a dug-out canoe and paddle north along the wild shores of Cape York – and off the edge of civilisation – in a final epic odyssey.

“My dream is to paddle north to PNG,’’ he said. “This world has become too busy. I’m going somewhere I can disappear off the map.’’

He will be farewelled in a private funeral ceremony today.