Man vs Wild Complete Series

I'm bear grylls. Whoo!

I'm gonna show you what it takes to get out alive

From some of the most dangerous places on earth.

Whoo!

I've got to make it through a week of challenges...

In the sort of places you wouldn't last a day

Without the right survival skills.

Now I'm in arnhem land, northern australia...

...Where the man-eating, saltwater crocodiles

Dominate the food chain.

Man, did you see the size of that?

I'm hanging on to crumbling sandstone.

Aah!

And I battle to stay out of the water

And away from those hungry crocs.

-

Captions paid for by discovery communications

This old wwii dakota

Is gonna drop me into the northern tip of australia

Into a prehistoric landscape.

That's arnhem land.

I call it prehistoric

Because arnhem land is one of those rare places

That's remained unaltered since time began.

With scorching heat and deadly snakes,

It's no surprise that people have struggled to survive here.

Then at the top of the food chain --

The flesh-eating crocodile,

And there's over a 100,000 of them here.

And some of those crocs can weigh over a ton.

Make one careless move and you're going to end up as lunch.

Despite the harshness of this environment,

One group developed survival techniques

That enabled them to live here.

The aboriginal people

Have adapted to this dangerous terrain.

And they've had over 50,000 years to hone those skills.

My task is to use some of their survival techniques

And make it out of here alive.

If you're gonna survive the northern territories,

You've got to throw yourself into it 120%.

Here we go.

Yah!

Man: Jumper's away.

He's gone.

Northern territory, here we come.

Man, the first thing that hits you about this place

Is just the heat and the humidity.

I could feel it just coming in close to the ground.

It's like being in a very hot steamer.

Okay, let's get this thing laid out.

You can use this as an air marker.

So if search and rescue are looking for me,

Something big and bright for them to see from the air.

When someone is lost in the wilderness,

Aerial reconnaissance is vital.

Make yourself seen from the air, and it may save your life.

Might well be, through, that nobody knows you're missing

And nobody is out there even looking for you.

And if that's the case,

Then you need to work out which direction to go.

And in the northern territories,

Your best option is to head north to the coast.

90% of australians live on the coast.

But if you do have to make that difficult decision to travel,

Be certain of the direction you're heading in

And don't deviate.

I'm gonna use a shadow stick

To work out which direction is north.

Cast a shadow straight down here,

And I'll mark the end of that shadow with a rock,

Wait 15 minutes or so, shadow will move,

And we'll get an idea of our direction.

See the shadow, the stick has moved a bit,

Put a rock on the other end, and you get a line here.

If you stand on that line,

Face the stick, you're gonna be heading north.

And obviously the longer you leave it,

Wider the line, the more accurate it's gonna be.

What I don't have in my favor, though, is time.

I don't want to wait in this heat any longer.

Want to get moving.

Before you head out, leave a marker for rescuers to follow.

Use whatever you find around you to make an arrow.

North towards that rocky outcrop.

It's hot, hot, hot.

Temperatures here are in the high 90s,

But it's the humidity levels that make the heat so intense.

Keep heading north. We need to get over this.

Humidity reduces a body's ability to cool itself

By slowing the evaporation of sweat.

The more physical the activity,

The greater the chances of heatstroke.

I'll need at least a gallon of water a day to survive here.

The scorching heat and high humidity levels

Mean thunderstorms are common here,

But even nature's most potent force can work in your favor.

Look, you can see there's been fire here.

Probably a lightning strike hit that...

Set it alight.

Actually, charcoal is often a good thing to take with you.

There's lots you can do with that --

Filter water with it, even help you with fire.

You drive a spark into bits charcoal,

You'll often get an ember that's gonna help you get the fire lit.

Let's take some of this with us.

The landscape is riddled with high ridgelines

And towering cliffs.

To keep heading north,

You'll need to fight your way around them

Or take the shorter route and go straight over the top.

But this sandstone is soft.

Eroded by the elements,

A path has been cut straight through the face.

This is no easy option.

Let's have a look down here.

Ahead of me lies a shear 80-foot drop.

I reckon we can work our way down this.

Chimney down this bit, bridge across it.

I need to stay in tight to this chimney.

Use just opposing forces --

Back and legs -- down this.

That's an awkward little gully, actually.

Oh, look. A snake.

Where's he gone now?

Don't want to mess around with him.

There he is.

Keelback snake.

They're not -- not deadly,

But you certainly wouldn't want to get bitten by one.

Snake like that out here is bad news.

Last bit just down this vine.

The cave climb has worked for me.

It's taken me right under the cliff and out the other side.

Check this out.

Just get down here.

There's a bit of water.

It's probably gonna be rainwater

That's come down here and collected.

The thing is, because it's shady,

The water's not gonna evaporate.

Come on, then.

I've still got this charcoal.

I can make a really simple sort of filter with that.

The biggest danger is drinking water containing bacteria

That will cause diarrhea or vomiting,

And that can lead to severe dehydration.

Crunch this up into nice, small granules.

Got a bit of gravely, bigger stuff,

Then on top of that, just some of these grasses.

You see how dirty that water is?

Put it through here.

Let that just run, just get any of the dirt out of it.

Give it a couple of gos before we start drinking from it.

For me, this is what survival is all about --

A simple idea using natural resources, and it works.

You see how clear that is coming out.

It's never going to be 100%,

But it takes a lot of the dirt out.

And the carbon and the charcoal

Filters out a lot of other impurities as well

That you can't see.

Aah.

Oh, man. That is good.

You got a desert this hot,

You find a little hole like this with rainwater in it,

You got to make use of it.

You ought to stay here till you're well-hydrated

Before you move on again.

I've had my fill. Now it's time to get going.

See if we can get around this corner.

I'm in arnhem land, australia...

Get around this corner.

...Heading north towards the coast,

But I've ended up at a difficult dead end.

I can get my foot back on it.

I've got it.

Not going to be going around that way.

Okay. Back up.

In tough country like this, you'll never win every battle.

There's no shame in making another plan

And searching out an alternative route down.

Look, there's a mad old cave here.

Goes all the way in there.

See, it's more than likely gonna be aboriginal, this.

See all the soot right here on the ceiling from the fires?

It's gonna be a good place, though, just to shelter

From the heat of the day, get out of the sun a bit.

Okay, so, use this as a base. Gonna try and find some food.

Generations of aboriginal hunters

Going back to the stone age

Have left a record of their prey

On thousands of sites across arnhem land.

There's cave art here.

Looks like a fish -- a barramundi.

Sort of like a turtle there.

This is what the aboriginals would do --

Paint their prey onto walls like this and caves.

Believed if they then rubbed it,

Would encourage the prey to multiply