GINA: I think I've made the choice of where my shelter will be.
I'm going to start making a kayak.
The kayak is going to solve my fishing needs,
allow me to find water, and do my recce.
So this kayak is actually pivotal to my survival out here.
PETER: I have not seen a single thing alive.
Just quiet and nothing.
CHRIS: What if I just can't catch anything?
I wonder when I'm going to crack.
BECK: This is a super tough environment.
I want to go home.
(GRUNTS)
The COVID's irritating your heart and that's causing it to raise.
I need to medically take you out of the field.
Who wants to sit out there cold, wet and miserable the longest?
Congratulations - you win, you know.
Ha-ha-ha! Yes!
I'm officially tapping out.
PETER: I don't know what's going to happen.
But something better fucking change.
WOMAN: Holy fuck. What is this place?
What have I gotten myself into?
MAN: We have to document this whole experience
while trying to survive at the same time.
(CHUCKLES) Check it out.
Like 60 K winds. (WIND HOWLS)
MAN: Mother Nature's kicking my arse.
(GRUNTS, GROANS)
MAN: This experience is just as much a mind game
as it is a survival game.
(LAUGHS) We got dinner!
Argh, you fucker!
I'm suddenly going downhill, very, very fast.
(GRUNTS)
WOMAN: A $250,000 prize would change my life.
I like you, Tasmania!
Morning.
Had another night similar to my first night.
It rained. Uncomfortable.
That was about it.
Time to get up.
I really haven't eaten anything since I got here.
The tough part is going to be the starvation.
A few floaty bits in here.
As soon as I found out I was in this competition,
I've dropped everything and been preparing full time.
And I have gone nuts and I put on as much weight as I could.
I've got 19 kilos in two months.
It feels like I've got back fat. (LAUGHS)
Think this is about... almost 30 days of...
..free time, almost.
Like, I've got a 30-day buffer.
Like, if I...if I ate nothing,
in 30 days time, I'd probably end up looking like I was two months ago,
when I didn't have any excess weight.
So I'm glad it's there.
(LAUGHS)
It actually wobbles first on my stomach.
I've never seen my stomach wobble like that.
The biggest threat for me here is starvation,
and that could lead to my elimination,
because I get too thin.
This may take me to a level of starvation
that I've never experienced before.
(RAIN FALLS)
I need to gather food to feed my body.
Make a set line on a pole for fishing.
I want to keep the bendy tip on this,
help me know if I've got a fish on.
This is a pretty shabby rod.
It's not really a rod, though. It's a set line.
So it doesn't matter that it's shabby.
Matters it just does a job.
Right.
Now I'm all ready to go to go
to go find a big, chunky piece of bait.
There's a tree over there I noticed last night
had some borer holes in it,
and I'm hoping that they're kind of similar to witchetty grubs.
So I'm going to have a dig around in there.
Oh, jackpot.
Ha-ha-ha!
Yes.
That is a good sign,
because what I'm looking at now is going to be
my bread and butter bait from now on,
and I've got a bloody tree full of it.
Yes.
Check this out.
It's almost a waste to use it for bait.
Oh, yeah, look how long is.
(LAUGHS) Awesome.
I mean, you just couldn't get better bait than that.
Alright. Let's stick him on a hook.
Sorry, mate. This is going to hurt.
I'll go him through the head first so it puts him out of his misery.
(LAUGHS)
Yum, yum.
Alright, let's get this in the water.
We have to be able to see our fishing lines at all times
to see if we've accidentally caught a platypus or something like that.
So I can see this with the branch on the end there.
Whatever I catch, it's going to alert me to it
because I'll be able to see that whole thing going.
So if I apply that same technique,
I can have a line there, there, there...
Basically this whole 180-degree sphere.
And I can easily see if I caught a fish.
That feels good.
I may as well do some more now...
..just to increase the likelihood I'll know where the bait is.
When you've been deprived of food and water,
personal safety becomes a higher priority.
My biggest fear is getting taken out by something small
and missing out on the opportunity to really go the distance.
And it is a possibility.
So I'm going to have to be really careful
that I don't do anything stupid.
Yeah.
That's a sign to stop doing that movement, whatever that was.
This fatigue I'm feeling now is actually quite similar
to starvation fatigue.
Have a rest, and then...
..kayak time.
(BIRD CAWS)
It's a raven.
Crah, wah, wah.
(RAVEN CAWS)
I'll just go for a little wander.
It's weird. I didn't feel hungry for the first two days...
..but today, I am feeling it a little bit.
Maybe just my body slowing down.
I love botany and I love plants,
and I've, like, I learnt a lot about bush foods, traditional foods.
I'll be able to hopefully procure a good source of food,
even if the hunting isn't going well.
The wood fungus here is so cool.
It's huge.
It's bigger than my hand.
Look. That's my hand.
But this environment is so different to what I'm used to.
It's just...
It's thrown me a little bit for six.
So beautiful.
The only couple of foods, plants, that I've seen so far
are just like, you know, that bladey grass.
You can eat the very bottom bit.
Whoo! Ha-ha. Check this out.
So this is what I was looking for.
This nice white, beautiful white here is what I'm looking for.
Mmm. A little bit acidic.
But I'm pretty sure that's good to eat.
What I'm thinking is I could easily eat the first, say, inch...
..but I might... I might go two inches
and go the fibrous sort of bit
just to get some roughage through my tummy.
I think that might be good for me. Cool.
Ooh, there might be some animals on your outfit, Juno,
that your mum might see.
I've got a wombat.
I have a PhD in ecology,
where I focused on animals that live in hollows in trees.
As a wildlife biologist, I travel around Australia
looking for new species of plants and animals.
Ah-nang-nang-nang-nang!
I'm a really experienced solo hiker
and I love getting outdoors on my own.
I've hiked most of Australia's iconic hiking trails
and many off-track ones as well.
I live in Canberra with my partner, Elsie.
(LAUGH) What are you looking at? Hey?
Elsie gave birth to Juno six months ago,
and Juno's just the happiest little baby ever.
And by the time you come back... Oh, my God.
..she might be crawling.
Leaving Elsie and Juno is going to be incredibly hard,
but I would love for my daughter to be proud of me
when she grows up and watches this.
There's not many points in your life where you are offered an opportunity
to go sit in the woods, you know, test your skills.
It's the ultimate test.
(CALLS) Ooh-uhh!
Oooooo-uhh!
I think it's pretty important for me to try and get into fishing
and get some protein happening if I want to stay out here long-term.
Found this really cool sort of a whipping stick
that I thought could make a great bush pole.
So I'm just going to trim it up, whack a bit of line on there,
chuck a hook on and you know...
Yeah, see how we go.
Bait.
I've been collecting bait and putting it in my shoe.
Big guy. I think they're called nightcrawlers.
I might actually use him in pieces.
I mean, I feel like the meanest person
sticking that hook through a worm.
Part of me wants to catch something. The other part doesn't want to.
But this is what I'm here for.
To push myself.
Don't fall in the water.
I have no idea how hard it is to catch fish here,
so just see how I go.
(SIGHS) I don't feel right about this one.
Oh.
It all feels a little bit harder maybe
without the calories coming in,
not getting my 2,000 calories I need per day.
Like, I know that the calories are the issue,
but I'm just trying to live with the land.
I'm not using it for my personal gain.
As an ecologist,
someone who's worked hard to protect the environment,
I'm not really in a rush to just start...
..destroying it.
We'll see. We'll see how I go with the hunger, I guess.
CHRIS: Morning!
I had some dreams about eating last night.
Scallops and chicken wings and...oh, heaps of bread.
I've got to get some food.
Alright, I think it's time to go for a little bit of a hunt.
Here, possum, possums...
Oh, he's got another century!
I'm going to be on the lookout for possums
that are asleep in some logs or up a tree.
Oh!
Yeah. Nice big possum stew.
Oh-oh-oh!
I reckon that's what I'll do one.
This is nuts.
It's just a matter of finding...
..nice log. Oh.
There's a beautiful log there, but it all just seems so wet.
If I was a possum, I'd be, like, "Stuff that. Not sleeping in there."
Oh, here we go.
OK. What have we got here?
Oh, you know what?
Is that possum fur?
It's just to the right of that.
No way.
Let's go and have a look around the corner there.
It was about there.
Even if that is a possum, he's, um...
..way too far up here for me to get.
So try and find one that's a bit more accessible.
If we don't get meat someday soon,
we're probably not going to do too well out here.
What is that?
(WATER TRICKLES)
(FOOTSTEPS SQUELCH)
I wish you could feel what it's really like to be here.
It's like I'm in this magical, mysterious children's book.
Getting, like, mad disassociation feelings,
which normally is a bit ordinary, but at the moment, like...
This is amazing.
This is the best part about life, being here right now,
looking at this on this exact day.
This is... This is what it's all about.
Wouldn't mind a coffee, though.
I'm doing this for myself, ultimately.
I want to really improve my mental health
and my emotional connection with nature.
It's been many years since I got out of the Army,
and, you know, I've got some severe anxiety and some PTSD.
Changed my, um...animal I'm targeting.
We're now moving on to crayfish. Freshies!
Yeah. It took me a long time to find out
what the actual cause was with the PTSD.
8.5 months in the Middle East,
just always on the adrenaline high,
and just coming back from that and going into the civilian world...
I still haven't really, you know, found my place, I guess.
(GROANS)
It's a bit harder to find then the southern rock lobsters.
Going home empty-handed...again.
Yeah, it's going to be a real issue
if I can't get any...any meat, lobsters, fish.
Basically just means...
..stay out here long enough until the body shuts down.
That's really it.
There's no other fact to it.
My job is hunting. My job is tracking. My job is stalking.
It's what I do. I'm a hunter.
Like, when I sound the baddest motherfucker in this competition,
it's because I am.
Not even a bird.
Come on. Give me something.
Just give me something to be like, "Hey.
"Hey, buddy. How are you going?"
I'm great with a rifle.
Great with guns. Great with a bow.
I'm so used to using them, though,
when it comes to being without them...
..it's very hard as well.
Day three.
No food.
I'm starting to feel it.
I really am starting to feel it.
I need something to put in my system.
Something. Anything.
Anything.
I need 10,000 calories of food
just to sustain what I'm doing right now.
And I'm not going to get that doing what I've been doing.
Got the mushrooms too.
You eat one of them, you wake up in four days time.
It's a good way to make time go by.
But you'll also be in a bad way when you wake up.
You know what? I'm a great shooter.
It doesn't matter how good you can shoot.
You've got nothing to shoot at, you can't fucking shoot.
I don't know what to do anymore.
Tasmania, so far...
..you're beating me.
You're winning.
Absolutely wrecking me.
I chucked a little line in
with just the worm that I found last night,
and I...
..I've got a feel, I think.
Ah!
Holy shit. Yes.
Ugh!
Yeah, baby! (LAUGHS)
It is. It's an eel.
I'm going to dong it.
Yeah. Got to dong it.
Sorry, mate.
(THUMPS)
(SIGHS)
Thank you.
Now what do I do?
Alright. I just...
..filleted my little eel.
My main strategy might just be
whenever I get food is just to eat it.
So, yeah, I might get the fire going
and boil this guy up and have like a...
..eel stew.
(LAUGHS)
That's because I'm not really going to enjoy this meal.
Like, it's calories, but...
..I don't really like fish. Or eels.
I like sushi, but I'm not prepared to eat anything raw here.
(SIGHS) OK. I'm going to eat the eel.
I don't actually want to eat the eel,
but this is what we're doing.
We're eating eel. (LAUGHS)
I don't want to eat the eel.
(GROANS)
OK. It's alright.
I'm going to eat the eel.
It's going to be delicious.
It's oily.
Wow, it's so oily.
Ugh...
Ugh... It's OK. Ugh...
Mind over matter. Whoo!
Yee-ha! (LAUGHS)
Livin' the dream. Yoo... (BURBLES)
(LAUGHS) Mmm.
Golly. Bluh.
It's so oily.
Clearly I'm not starving enough. (LAUGHS)
Ohh!
Oh... Fuck, it's disgusting.
(BURBLES)
Bleugh! Ugh!
I want to be getting my nutrients straightaway.
I don't want to be waiting for my body to start breaking down.
I've already found a few little grubs, so...why not?
At this stage, I don't have to eat much.
Might even try these on a hook as well. Fishing.
I can keep going on pretty much nothing,
and that can be a little bit of an advantage.
Oh. Ugh!
(EXCLAIMS) Sour.
Oh! Feel like a bloody...
..toxin or something on my tongue.
That was silly. (LAUGHS)
Eee...
Foraging for bush tucker is what I know
and what I enjoy doing.
Found a bit of coffee berry.
Still has its fruits on.
Couple there.
Dose him in some water for 24 hours,
and then they should be nice and soft, ready to eat.
It's a little win. Yay.
As an Aboriginal man,
this experience will deepen my connection to country.
I'm from Dharawal country here in the Illawarra.
I'm a wildlife and environmental officer,
but my passion working on country is what brought me to my career.
For my job, I need to have an extensive knowledge
of flora and fauna, both native and invasive.
Foraging for bush tucker and being able to read country
is going to be an advantage to me.
Don't get it. You don't like it?
(GIRLS SQUEAL)
Our house is being renovated
for a couple of rooms for the children
and we are currently living in a caravan.
WOMAN: Yay! (LAUGHS)
(GIRLS EXCLAIM, SQUEAL)
I'm doing this for my own self journey,
but also to financially benefit my family.
They're sacrificing time without their father.
They are sacrificing living in a caravan.
Tearing up. (LAUGHS)
This experience is going to be so hard.
I love you. I love you so much. I'll miss you.
(THUNDER RUMBLES, RAIN FALLS)
Oh, dear.
That is my first hole in my tarp.
No!
Pretty shitty shelter if it starts picking up 35 K winds.
To be successful in this, I need to keep warm and dry.
So I need to get started on my permanent shelter.
(LAUGHS)
It's pissing down!
Who would have thought I'd bring my axe on Alone
to hold up my shelter...
..and keep the water out.
Oh, dear.
CHRIS: No food.
(SIGHS)
I feel like I've let myself down a bit.
It's not good to sit down and think. Not good for me.
It's very easy for the mind to go, "Oh, you can just go home and eat,"
But you think like that,
and you lose all the motivation of all the other thoughts.
That's the reason I'm here.
Can't sit still in the same spot for too long.
Time to make a fishing net.
So when you tie him off at the top,
you want to keep even spacing along here,
and we're going to go all the way along.
Every day I deal with my PTSD and anxiety.
Some hours are better, some days are better, and some are pretty dark.
Yeah, I always thought, you know, post-traumatic stress,
especially military related, was...
You know, you kind of don't really have any right to have it
unless things got really, really nasty,
because, you know, there's always someone next to you going,
"Oh," you know?
"You didn't see much.
"Not compared to what I saw or what I did."
And that's not the right way to talk to people.
And it's not the right way to think.
You can get PTSD off the most smallest amount of things.
So, yeah, pretty much after Iraq, I got off the plane in Darwin,
went to the pub, got pissed, really pissed.
I guess that was just what seemed normal.
Like, what else do you do?
I just turned to the alcohol, and just partied.
Partied hard.
Yeah, that's the worst thing you can do
if you're sort of struggling a little bit mentally,
is just, um...
..yeah, start hitting the piss.
You know, I got to the point where I was drinking...
..maybe 90...90 beers a week.
And that's with having some days off.
What a dickhead, hey?
That's not who I want to be, who I am.
And then everything just came crashing down a few months later.
I had a bit of a breakdown.
It's just the booze.
Booze bringing out the demons. Shh.
It feels good to talk about it.
Even though I'm talking to this net.
(SIGHS) It's actually the most anxious I've been...
..since I've been here on the land
is when I'm talking about it, about this.
(EXHALES) The old chest.
Chest gets tight.
Might be enough of that sort of talk for now.
I don't want to go too far down the hole.
Let's go fishing. I'm bored of this.
VOICEOVER: Alone Australia is brought to you by Kia.
Experience the ultimate human endurance
as 10 contestants battle to survive alone in the Tasmanian wilderness,
with the winner taking home a prize worth $250,000.
There's my hinge.
(CREAKING)
Ha-ha! (LAUGHS)
Still alive. That's good.
This place is an absolute bastard of a place to fish.
Like, it's almost impossible to not have a snag and fish from the bank.
(KOOKABURRA LAUGHS)
(IMITATES KOOKABURRA LAUGH)
The kayak is the only way to solve it.
If I trawl through the middle of the riverbed,
that is clear of snags.
That would definitely be
a place where the fish would want to hang out.
Ta-da!
I hope this 20-kilo fat layer last until I get back to my normal weight,
and I hope by then I'll have my ducks in a row
whilst I have this energy and fat.
That's pretty much my goal.
I like this little tree,
but I need a vice so I can have things held for me while I saw them,
or I'm trying to strip some bark off the...
..the things that go in the bottom of my kayak.
And this little tree is going to be my vice, hopefully.
My greatest skill is improvisation.
I can visualise engineering challenges in my head
and test them,
and then come up with a fairly good working model of something
the first time.
(SIGHS) I also need to make myself some tools.
(EXCLAIMS)
Beauty.
Eventually I'll get to a point out here
where I've kind of made everything, including the kitchen sink.
And one little task is much easier
because I've created all the tools to go and do the next task.
But it's just this bedding in thing, getting all your systems set up.
Alright. Now I've got a mallet...
..to hit the back of the axe...
..to make the vice,
and then I can wedge in whatever I need to cut into here
and it'll hold it like a vice...
..so I can polish the beams that will go in my kayak.
It might seem like a lot of effort for that one job,
but I'm going to do a lot of these poles,
and so many things about what I'm going to do,
it's going to be more efficient
if I'm doing it at a good height and safer,
and I'm less likely to cut myself.
Yep. That vice is bloody good.
There's several benefits to de-barking it like this.
One is that there's less sharp edges that can puncture the kayak.
Two, the bark adds weight.
And the lighter the kayak is the better
because I'll be pulling it in and out of the water.
So I'm just going to keep pushing through this tonight,
see if I can skin all the poles off.
I'll figure out some of the design for the kayak.
The quicker I get this bloody thing together...
..the quicker I can get out fishing and exploring.
(RAIN FALLS)
Oh. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Come on.
(LAUGHS) Old Rex Hunt. He'd be proud.
Yabba-yabba-doo! That's all, folks.
Was that him? I think he did something like that.
What if I just can't catch anything? (RAIN FALLS)
Then I just wait until I starve.
I don't know how I'll go mentally with pure starvation.
Looks like something's moving on there.
Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on.
No way. Ha, ha, ha!
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Yeah! Yeah, I got a fish!
Yeah!
You beauty! Ha-ha-ha!
Jesaulenko!
Oh, I'm so happy.
Whoa!
(LAUGHS)
We got dinner!
I got a bloody fish.
That's me first trout too.
OK.
We're going to put him to sleep.
That's it.
Oh, we're having fish soup for dinner.
Yeah!
(LAUGHS) I was getting pretty disheartened before, I'll be honest.
Righto, let's get out of this rain.
Ha-ha-ha!
I can catch food! I can survive!
Don't even need a possum.
You guys are safe now. (LAUGHS)
(EXHALES) It's good to be alive. isn't it? It's good to be alive.
Oh, yeah!
The ground. Even the ground looks good.
Everything's really pretty.
Just not to live and survive.
(GROANS)
(CHUCKLES)
It is very, very hard to walk through that terrain.
It's all mud and slosh and slippery and mosses and...
Look, look. I'm just stepping.
Just step.
Not even putting weight on it. Just...
Fuck.
Don't lose your shit, mate.
(EXHALES)
There's just nothing but fucking mud.
All I need is one game trail. Just one.
Just hear something move and take off,
I'll be very happy.
Even if it's an animal not on my species list,
I'll be happy just to know that something lives in this.
(SIGHS)
Oh, fuck. Can't even fucking walk here. Fuck me dead.
It's like I'm ice skating here.
Fucking trying, I'll tell you that much.
I'm trying not to lose my fucking shit. Fuck. Oh...
This is really getting on my nerves.
Just keep pushing, Peter. Just keep pushing.
Whoa!
(GROANS)
VOICEOVER: Alone Australia is brought to you by Kia.
Experience the ultimate human endurance
as 10 contestants battle to survive alone in the Tasmanian wilderness,
with the winner taking home a prize worth $250,000.
That fucking hurt. (GROANS)
That was my knee in that rock.
That was my back...on that branch.
And my axe smacked me in the back of the fucking head.
Oh!
Fuck!
That hurt my knee.
Alright.
Everything just keeps fucking me here.
Am I not supposed to fucking be here or something? Like, fucking tell me.
Fuck.
I've got shit that's fucking wet everywhere.
Fucking hungry.
Oh, my God.
My first night I set up the tarp wrong...
..and it was raining a lot
and all the water ended up coming in to the tarp
and absolutely soaked all my clothes,
so I don't have any more dry clothes.
I can't start a fire because everything's really wet.
After I went for that walk today.
There wasn't much sign of anything here.
I've walked every single inch of where...
..the area has been allocated to me, and I didn't see anything.
And that's not saying that they're not here.
I just didn't see them.
I don't know what to do.
I will make that call.
This is something that I can't do.
I thought I could, but I can't.
There's nothing else for me here.
(PHONE RINGS)
WOMAN: (OVER PHONE) Hello.
Um, I'm officially tapping out. Come and grab me.
I've done three days of walking.
I haven't seen a single thing.
Just come pick me up. Take me home.
They're on their way. So we'll see what happens.
Here they come.
My saviours.
WOMAN: Pete, what's happened?
(GROAN) I had a fall earlier on today
and I thought I was going to be OK,
but it's just gotten a lot worse.
My knee's just blown out, so it's not...
There's not much else I can do, really.
I pushed...I pushed hard trying to find something to hunt.
I haven't eaten in three and a bit days, so...
Um...
Yeah. And I just...
It'll be stupid for me to push further.
OK, so just can just point to where it's...where it's sore?
There. Just there, is it?
Yeah. OK.
Stomping through that mud, you just get so frustrated.
You just want to just chomp through it
and just keep stomping away just to get out of it,
and that one wrong step is what got me.
Accidents happen. They're called 'accidents' for a reason.
I thought I was going to last to the very end.
There's no doubt in my mind.
I'm just spewing because I had so much more to show the world
what I wanted to do and what I could do.
It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity
that just didn't work out in my favour.
You deal with the cards you're dealt.
And if you've got a good hand, you play.
If you don't, you fold.
This is me folding.
Really enclosed here.
It takes this long to go one metre, it's not a good sign.
I'm exhausted.
Oh! What is that? Where is it?
Wow.
The shack is complete. Hello.
I don't know if it's waterproof yet, but we'll find out.
Hello, little fella,
I'm going to switch to making that trap full-time today.
It looks pretty good, but I didn't test it, you know?
I don't know whether to be hopeful or not.
I'm losing my fucking shit, eh? I really am.
You live another day, my friend.
I'm over it. I'm fucking over it.
Captions by Red Bee Media (c) SBS Australia 2023