Arabian oryx towards Saudi Arabia, and by 1914, only a few survived outside that country. A few were reported in Jordan into the 1930s, but by the mid-1930s, the only remaining populations were in the Nafud Desert in northwestern Saudi Arabia and the Rub' al Khali in the south. In the 1930s, Arabian princes and oil company clerks started hunting Arabian oryx with automobiles and rifles. Hunts grew in size, and some were reported to employ as many as 300 vehicles. By the middle of the 20th century, the northern population was effectively extinct. The last Arabian oryx in the wild prior
Lost in the Desert story switches several times to Dirkie's father Anton DeVries (played by the director Jamie Uys, credited as Jamie Hayes) and follows his increasingly desperate efforts to locate his son, including having a couple of million leaflets specially printed and spread over the desert from a plane, containing instructions for Dirkie on how to survive in the desert, and assuring him that his father loves him and won't give up trying to rescue him. The film features the unusual technique of showing Anton playing the piano, then switching to Dirkie in the desert while continuing to use the piano music as