Inspiration for Crocodile Dundee became a drug-addled killer shot dead by police
When a drug-addled bushman shot dead a police officer in 1999 it brought to an end the colourful life of the man who inspired Crocodile Dundee
NSW
Don't miss out on the headlines from NSW. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Police in Adelaide River, south of Darwin, had been called to set up a roadblock to head off a dangerous armed man.
The man was Rod Ansell, who was suffering some kind of paranoid delusion, brought on by drugs, that Freemasons had kidnapped his children. Ansell had wounded two men who had been unfortunate enough to cross his path. One, David Hobden, lost an eye when Ansell shot through the windscreen of his truck, the other, Brian Williams, had his hand badly injured by a gunshot blast when he tried to stop Ansell by hitting him with a baseball bat. Ansell had fled into the bush, a place where he was very much at home.
Police had been dispatched to cordon off the area and Sergeant Glen Huitson and his colleague, senior constable James O’Brien, were manning the southern roadblock.
At about 10.30am on August 3, 1999, 20 years ago today, two removals workers were stopped at the roadblock, talking to the police, when one was hit in the pelvis by a bullet. Huitson shouted “Get on the ground” as more shots came from the direction of bushes running alongside the road.
O’Brien provided cover fire while Huitson called for backup from the Tactical Response Group (TRG). Huitson then grabbed a 12-gauge shotgun to return Ansell’s fire but a ricochet from one of Ansell’s bullets hit Huitson in the abdomen. Ordinarily his kevlar vest would have stopped the bullet, but he hadn’t done up a strap on the vest properly and the bullet proved fatal. He died later in hospital.
O’Brien had only seconds to act as the trucks carrying TRG troops were coming down the road. He was unable to warn them in time and one of the troop carriers rolled as it tried to avoid the gunfire, the second collided with it.
Ansell, who had plenty of experience with a gun, was ready to start picking off TRG officers as they emerged from the stricken vehicles when O’Brien took his chance and shot. Soon Ansell was lying face down, dead.
It was a horrific end to both the career of a respected and admired cop and that of a colourful bush character.
Ansell had once been famous as the man who survived crocodiles and snakes while stranded on his own in the Northern Territory wilderness for seven weeks, an amazing feat that inspired Paul Hogan’s hit blockbuster action comedy Crocodile Dundee, about a resourceful, laconic character living largely off his wits in the outback.
But despite the fame Ansell was never able to capitalise on that reputation, falling on hard times and stumbling into drug abuse before his dramatic demise.
He was born in Murgon in Queensland in 1954. Not much is known of his childhood but at 15 he moved to the Northern Territory where he found whatever work he could but became known for hunting the feral water buffalo that plagued the Top End. At 23 he went on what he said was a “fishing trip” in a motorboat heading for the Victoria River. He later admitted he was hunting crocodiles. When something upturned the boat he was tipped into the water, but managed to board the dinghy he had been towing behind, escaping along with his dogs, some food, his swag, a rifle and a hunting knife, and landed on a small island at the mouth of the Fitzmaurice River.
He later said he wasn’t lost, because he knew where he was, but he was hundreds of kilometres from the nearest human settlement and not sure he would survive the arduous trip overland.
He spent the next 56 days dodging crocodiles, sleeping rough in a tree he shared with a brown snake, living on whatever food he could find or catch and drinking the blood of hunted animals to keep hydrated because of the lack of fresh water.
He was finally rescued when he heard the sound of bells on horses’ bridles and followed the sound toward two indigenous stockmen and their overseer. Emaciated but otherwise apparently none the worse for his ordeal, the stockmen took him back to the nearest settlement at Palumpa.
While he didn’t keep the story a secret, he didn’t go around boasting about it. He later said he thought it was no “big deal’’. But when the story did spread it made him something of a legend. Eventually the newspapers heard the story and called him a modern-day “Robinson Crusoe”.
He made for great copy. He had a typically Australian, laconic, way of speaking. He also liked to embellish some of the facts, suggesting to one reporter that his boat might have been hit by a whale. He was also ruggedly handsome, with blue eyes and blond hair. The public loved him. In 1979 he re-enacted his survival for the documentary To Fight The Wild, which was adapted to a book in 1980.
He went on a speaking tour around Australia and the US, amusing his handlers by going barefoot most of the time, although he was forced to wear thongs on the plane, and because of his habit of sleeping in his swag rather than in the comfy hotel beds.
In a 1981 interview with Michael Parkinson he described how he was bemused by a hotel bidet.
While it made him some money Ansell didn’t become rich. He borrowed money to take up a pastoral lease on land in the Northern Territory in 1985, which he established as a buffalo farm named Melaleuca.
But Ansell didn’t disappear into obscurity. When Hogan and partner John Cornell were looking for an idea for a movie they drew inspiration from Ansell’s story to make Crocodile Dundee.
When the film was released in 1986, Ansell’s story was rediscovered. But he never collected any royalties. Refused permission to call himself the real “Crocodile Dundee”, he was unable to make money from his fame.
He had other problems. In the 1980s the Northern Territory government forced him to destroy thousands of buffalo as part of a bovine brucellosis and tuberculosis eradication campaign, without compensating him for the loss.
In financial trouble, his marriage fell apart, Melaleuca was overtaken by weeds and in 1991 he was forced sell. In 1992 he was convicted of stealing cattle. By 1999 he was unemployed and had become addicted to amphetamines.
His drug-induced psychotic episode ended with him lying dead in the dust beside a Northern Territory highway.
Originally published as Inspiration for Crocodile Dundee became a drug-addled killer shot dead by police