Here's the BBC story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/w...re/3314895.stm
The things I found interesting were that he was stranded for 3 days before he was found, and:
"He had made the SOS sign in wet sand by shuffling his feet below the high-tide line to indicate it had been written recently."
That's pretty clever for someone suffering from heatstroke.
(Of course on the other hand it means that you have to re-do it every 12 hours. And what if a plane flies by at high tide?)
http://www.thesundaymail.news.com.au...55E903,00.html
This says that the other stranded guy who died was unrelated to this one.
"A Coastwatch spotter saw the SOS and noticed Mr Holdsworth and his car on a second sweep. They took photographs of a waving Mr Holdsworth and e-mailed the pictures back to Broome police. The pictures were so clear that Sgt Jon Groves was able to read the logo on Mr Holdsworth's hire car. He called the firm to discover the identity of the stranded tourist."
I'm trying to find out how big his SOS was, but nobody seems to say. I can't get a sense of its size from the pictures.