The goal is to get home by nightfall.
I'm exhausted.
Oh! What is that?
Oh, it's a platypus.
Wow.
I'm very glad to be here.
I want to be out here for 90 days.
MIKE: Oh, yes.
Definite pademelon.
Make that trap now while the animal is there.
Quicker I finish this, quicker I could possibly be eating it.
Starting to feel how harsh this place can be.
It's like a camp trip from hell where you just can't leave.
Man, my brain is scattered.
Starting to lose a bit of hope on my abilities to catch food out here.
Suddenly going downhill very, very fast.
Fuck this. I'm over it. I'm fucking over it.
MAN: We're halfway to the South Pole. We're going to be totally alone.
WOMAN: It's Tasmania.
It's cold, it's rain, it's snow.
WOMAN: We're all going to leave changed forever.
Yeah!
MAN: Mother Nature's kicking my arse.
Ahh!
MAN: This experience...
(GROAN) You fucker!
..is just as much a mind game...
Oh, my heart...
..as it is a survival game.
Check it out.
Whoa!
Is there another way?
MAN: Ooh-hoo.
WOMAN: $250,000 prize would change my life.
(EXHALES)
Man, yesterday afternoon was just emotionally challenging.
I've never experienced a hunger like this before.
The environment is perfect.
It's just the...what the lack of food is doing to my mind.
And a lot of ways that scares me. I don't like it.
What the hell is the answer here?
Like, how do I continue this journey...
..and keep achieving my motives
if I can't fuel my brain?
Just need a sign... it's going to be alright.
Maybe I'm not as mentally resilient as...
..I thought I'd grown to be.
This is just unfortunately the end of my time here.
Yeah.
You're fucking kidding me.
Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on.
That fishing line is moving.
I kid you not.
Oh, no way!
Come on, come on. Come on, come on, come on.
Come on. Come on.
What the fuck?
Oh!
No shit.
What the hell?
I feel like I should be more excited, like...
But I'm...I'm absolutely in shock.
Unbelievable.
Look at these eggs.
Oh, no way.
Look at that.
That is absolutely nuts.
Wow.
I'm just going to soup it up, the whole thing.
OK.
They can go in like that.
Don't never, not ever, give up.
Oh!
Food's in the belly.
Morale is higher.
Positivity.
There's nowhere else I want to be right now than here,
and that's honestly the truth.
Hmm.
GINA: Today,
I need to air...
..my everything.
I just need air on my everything.
(LAUGHS)
So I will now show you why.
Don't like medical stuff or 52-year-old woman's thighs, just...
..go and make a cup of tea.
OK.
How's this for...
..absolutely horrible?
Don't you wish you were me?
Yeah.
I think I figured out what's really aggravating
this hives reaction thing that I'm having.
I think it's heat.
I'm not used to wearing clothes.
Like, I normally have, like, one layer of cotton on,
and that's it, even in winter.
I mean, I don't even wear undies.
I haven't worn undies in 20 years. 30 years.
And now I constantly have, like, layers on my skin,
and it's not breathing.
So apologies if anything shows that shouldn't.
But, yeah, I need it for my health.
Oh!
So today's task is enclose this shelter.
I would like to have it done by tonight
so that this shelter is as insulated as possible,
so I can be warm without having all the layers of clothes on,
so that I can actually have a comfortable night's sleep tonight.
My strategy is still not to even worry about food,
just to work on this shelter.
I'm losing energy,
because I'm uncomfortable in my living situation.
And I need to fix that.
I need a front door.
So I'm going to set up a bush loom so I can weave my grass door.
OK. I'm going to pound these two...
..Y sticks in.
I should have bevelled the top of these so that they don't fray,
but I'm just too bloody knackered, actually.
And then there's going to be a cross bar across here
that a whole bunch of strings are tied to.
And then I've got seven individual sticks
that get driven into the ground there.
Ow.
Alright.
Then there's another seven strings that go in between those sticks.
(HUMS)
Oh, my God. I can make a musical instrument.
£ I'm making
£ A nest for my home
£ And tonight
£ I'm gonna sleep like a baby alone
£ Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Doo-doo-doo... £
Tchh!
Alone.
So what happens is
I'm going to put a row of sedge in through here,
and then pull this up to trap it,
and then insert another row and pull it down,
and it'll end up being a weave.
It's just a bit of a shemozzle.
However, it's working.
I really wanted to finish it by tonight
because I think it's going to be a cold night.
But I'm halfway there and I'm just too buggered.
So I'm going to have a little rest and then I'm going to keep plodding.
DUANE: Whoo-hoo!
Slurf's up.
Whoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo.
Frontside 50/50, backside three air.
Surf's up!
Now, I've been missing surfing that much...
Whoa-ho-ho-ho!
Slurf's up.
..that I've created my own kind of surfing.
Whoa.
It's called slurfing.
Shh! Yeah! Got it.
My shelter is right in front of water.
But here's the thing.
The snags in the lower-lying waters
isn't really suitable for catching fish.
(WATER LAPS)
Today, I'm going to go explore that far bay.
Have a show of what this beautiful place has to offer
as far as food source goes.
Now, how in the world do I get across all this?
Yeah. Any way around...
Yeah.
I tell you what this last week's brought for me.
It's brought on an appreciation for food.
I've had next to nothing for seven days, and I'm really, really hungry.
Like... Like, yeah, like, proper hungry.
Look down there. No snags.
A chance for me to throw a line out, hopefully get some nice food.
Wouldn't that be lovely?
(WHISTLES)
Wow.
Sinkers and floats were not part of my ten items.
So what I've got is this, um...
..ah...
..tightening-up doobie whacker off my rain jacket.
Pretty sure it's... it's got a spring in it,
so it might be kind of weighted, but kind of floats.
We'll find out.
Use that as a float.
It's funny how just the littlest things like this
remind you of just playing with your son.
This reminds me of a car spring.
One of the springs of the Scalextric cars that he has at home.
Just doing little repairs with him.
(EXHALES)
You miss it. Definitely do.
Doing this survival stuff makes you appreciate a lot in life, eh? Just...
I could just go home and be with the kiddies.
It doesn't float.
My heritage is in a nation of Wanaruah,
up in Murrurundi in New South Wales.
I have a large extended family
with all my little nieces and nephews that I love dearly.
We're like a little mob.
We still hang out on weekends together.
But I just love seeing my own children with my nieces and nephews
playing around and learning off each other.
It's something that's so important and really beautiful.
Life is so beautiful and precious back home
that it's making me question,
how long do I really want to go without all that?
Got my trusty bottle rod.
Stick fish. Bloody hell.
(STOMACH RUMBLES)
My stomach's saying...
.."Hurry up and feed me something decent."
Let's have another go, hey?
If I'm not coming back with a fish, that's going to affect me big-time.
CHRIS: That is beautiful.
Honestly, let's just go for a swim.
Let's get out there in the surf.
Go and rip it up.
Whoa.
(GROANS) (BIRDS CAW)
Is he going to get naked?
Is he?
No, 'cause I'm watching these.
Fuck, it's going to be cold.
£ Ooh, yes
£ This is not like a bath. £
That trout did give me a new sense of what is available,
and it felt like a bit of an omen...
..that just reiterates that I'm here for a reason and I can do this.
Thank you, polar! Ha-ha!
God Almighty. It's bloody cold! Oh!
Wow. It feels nice, though.
The whole day is good, if I don't get overwhelmed.
The whole experience is awesome,
if I don't cross that line.
I guess I've scared any fish off for the next five days.
Oh, I feel good. I feel nice.
Oh, today has been such a change.
I feel like we've done a full 180.
Getting that fish. Having a feed.
It's a good mental health day today.
Recover and replenish the soul.
It's been many years since I got out of the army.
Yeah, I definitely gained some little side effects, we can say,
some mental health challenges.
You know, I hit the bottle pretty hard after Iraq,
and, you know, lots of substance abuse.
Whether it's guilt or shame or whatnot.
But I want to sort of,
you know, spend my life making up for those things.
Voila!
GINA: I want to show you something.
These pants were, like, ridiculously too small for me
when I came in at 94 kilos.
A friend of mine sewed this kind of like panel in,
so I'd be able to actually wear them.
But look how close I am to actually doing them up.
(PUFFS) Breathe in!
No, because if I break the button, I'm screwed.
Anyway, so...
Fucking stop saying so!
Ugh.
So... Again.
And that to me says I have lost at least seven kilos.
Possibly more.
That's a lot, considering I'm coming in with 30 kilos to lose.
When you're fasting for this long, bodies...they switch over.
I've definitely switched over into ketosis...
..which means I'm not burning carbohydrates for fuel anymore.
I'm burning fat, obviously.
I just went and got a whole lot more sausedge.
And I am going to finish this for tonight
so that tonight I'm going to be warm.
Proper warm.
Snuggly toasty. Yummy warm.
I got a door.
I can just walk in...
..and then I can close the door.
Ha!
Bit by bit.
Bit by fucking bit.
My house is warm the first time.
Coming into this, everyone was asking me, "Why?
"Why are you ding this? Like, what's your...what's your why?"
Was it to be the first woman to win? Yeah, sure.
Or is it to this? Is it to that? Yeah, sure.
I think the universe bends its attention and holds its breath...
..whenever humans make a stand for something, whatever it is.
I think part of my why, my deeper, deeper why...
..is it that I'm making a stand...
..to remembering a way of being...
..that my culture has largely forgotten.
I feel such kinship with that way of life.
A way of living where you can be in harmony with nature.
Because I know it's possible.
I know...I know it's possible.
So that's my why.
That's why I'm here, really.
Cooooee!
Nobody out here to hear that.
Big picture-wise, pretty happy with where I'm at.
I've made most of the kayak,
made a fishing rod, made a net,
got a pademelon trap on the ground.
I haven't lit a fire
and I'll continue not to have a fire until I actually need one.
Which could be tonight, if I get this pademelon.
It is the time I've been waiting for all day.
I'm going to go up and check the trap.
Well, I haven't really eaten anything for the week
other than, you know, one lot of shoots.
So I'm hoping now that all that hard work over this last week
will start producing something.
I almost don't want to look.
It's too nerve racking.
OK. Get me closer.
Damn it.
Logged the tree... and the trap did not go off.
Alright. Let's see what's on the trail cam.
Right.
That's me...
It's not standing on the net.
He's inspecting the net with his nose.
It doesn't make sense.
Like, he actually sniffs the trap, walks through the middle of it,
next to the trip line,
and it didn't bite him.
So I don't know why they're being cautious, but they are.
I have provided them an alternate route.
One around that side, and one around that side.
So I just got to block something there
and put another block just there.
The difference between winning this or not
is whether you can bring in food.
And I've got some pretty elaborate ways of doing that.
But if they don't pull in food,
then it's really just a starvation competition.
And I don't want to do that.
Like, I want to see if I can live off the land properly
without starving.
Oh, well. That's that.
I'm going to leave it there.
And my attention now is going to go back to the fire set-up.
So if I do get a pademelon, that groundwork is done,
so I can just cook him up.
(BIRDSONG)
Because it rains so frequently,
I need to put a cover over this fire.
Otherwise, it's just going to go out every 10 minutes.
And it takes a lot of effort to start a fire out here in the wet,
particularly with a ferro rod.
So I'm going to gather something that goes over that.
And I think the best bet is to go find a stringy bark and use that.
So in order to look after the tree...
..only take about a third.
Now, I've read that Aboriginal people wouldn't take it off the tree
unless they could separate it with their hands.
Because if you can't separate it with your hands,
it means that it's too dry.
Then the bark won't be flexible enough to bend.
This place is super wet...
Ah! ..and I can use my hands.
Ha-ha!
My survival skills have come from a range of different areas.
Some of the most important ones were when I was a kid.
Ah, that's a good sound.
I didn't play sports on the weekends
because I didn't want to waste my weekends playing sport.
I just wanted to be out fishing and camping.
It's been a lifelong passion.
This very shortly is going to fall off.
Ready?
Yeah.
Awesome.
(GROAN) Man. It weighs a ton.
It's full of water.
So as you get older, you just keep getting better,
because you've had more time to gather the skills.
You know, I'm 45 now.
By the time I'm 65, I'll probably have
almost double the amount of experience that I got now.
(GROANS)
That's part of the joy of it,
is that you're always getting better at it.
(GROANS)
Definitely don't want to be treading over logs with this on my head.
Ooh, having to bend it to get through these trees.
Hope it doesn't snap.
Uh!
Oh, shit. (GROANS)
(EXHALES)
If I can get that pademelon,
that is potentially a game winner for me.
Yeah.
If that's a regular thing, once a week I get a pademelon,
I've probably won.
(PANTS)
Piece of piss. (LAUGHS)
DUANE: I need food.
I'd love something hot.
Just something warm in the belly would be amazing.
I want to go back over to big bay to go for another fish.
Fuck. It's a freaking tricky little hike, though.
He's fucked me up there.
(LAUGHS)
I feel like I'm losing so much energy
just trying to get there and back.
Wishing I had my little boat, my wife, my two kids right now.
I need to feel love and give love.
Maybe it's time to just pack it up.
Oh.
Get away from there.
Here we go.
There we go. There we go.
Yes.
Guys.
(LAUGHS)
Oh! (LAUGHS)
Yes.
Get out. Come on.
Beautiful.
Oh, yes.
(LAUGHS)
Oh, I'm happy. Mwah.
Thank you.
Get back and...
..get him prepped up hopefully on a nice fire, and...
..fry him, if my wood's dry enough.
We'll see.
Long walk back.
It's so much colder today.
So today's plan is finishing that wall
so that it's rainproof,
because it's still getting drips coming through it.
So just be nice to have it dry here.
So pull out that foliage, stack it vertical,
make a bit of a frame out from here to...
..so everything can stand up on it and not fall this way either.
That should have that wall finished.
But it wouldn't be the end.
It won't even be the beginning of the end.
It will be the end of the beginning!
If I can get it started.
For those of you who think you'd have to be crazy to do this...
..you're probably right.
But I like crazy.
At drop, I let you know that I was not going to quit.
I was going to stick with it till the end.
And that was my solemn vow and promise.
Dear God, I take this land to be my home.
Through sunshine and bad weather.
Until medevac...
..or I'm the last one standing.
This is my solemn vow and promise.
So, I'm out here for the long haul.
I'm in it to win it.
A little damper than I'd like for working outside.
But I can manage it.
I'll be strong.
It'd be nice to have a shower.
Be nice to go out on a date with my wife,
to hug my kids.
But it's very important to be able to be content,
whether you've got plenty or little.
We'll get through the storm when it comes next
and be thankful for this time spent here.
Ooh. Careful with your shelter, Michael.
My faith has taught me not to rely on the luxuries in life.
I'm here to test my limits,
to take them...myself to the end of my limits.
And once I've got there, to lean on God to carry me further.
Just a couple more handfuls to go, and we might be done.
Great. Done.
That is pretty good there.
It's a massive improvement.
Don't tell me this tinder is still not dry enough.
It's got to be.
I need fire to fucking cook.
Friggin' stuck this tinder up my fucking arse
to try and get warm enough and dry enough.
It's just not. It lights up and... biiiiuw...turns black.
Fuck. What am I doing out here?
Like, it's a fish species that you can eat raw.
I think about all the good things back home I could be doing.
But what happens three or four days, five days, when I'm back home?
Might hit me and go, oh...
Or...do I push on...
..try and beat these mental barriers
and stay on...
..for as long as I absolutely can?
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.
MICHAEL: I just went to put my hat on.
One of the cheeky black flies of this area was in it, buzzing,
like inside my head or under.
Anything else in there?
What's that?
Yuck.
Fly maggot.
My hat got maggoted.
I'm going to spend the next half hour tweezering them off.
And how many maggots do I have in my hair?
(KOOKABURRA LAUGHS)
Kookaburra is laughing? Come on.
Oh, you could eat maggots. That's right.
(FLY BUZZES)
Go away, flies.
(SIGHS)
Remember your personal hygiene, Michael.
Priority one for today is a wash.
I was thinking about having a wash this morning as I lay in bed.
And...as much as I love the outdoors...
..I love coming home for a shower afterwards.
Being fresh.
So I'm going to enjoy having a wash today.
This will be my bathtub, I think.
It's meant to be a backpack cover.
Chuck some rocks in the fire,
so we can make myself some nice warm bath water.
These are my hot water fire rocks.
Hot, smoky water.
I think this will work.
We are ready to start filling with water.
Somebody told me, if you hot rock boil,
you won't burn the plastic bag that you're boiling in.
Today, we'll find out.
Yeah. It's hot.
I reckon that's hot enough.
Yeah.
Huh.
Well, let's have a feel of that water.
Temperature is...cool bath.
And cool bath better than no bath, so let's take it.
You know how a bath goes.
You see naked people, but you won't see me.
(WATER SPLASHES)
Oh!
Ha.
Wow.
You didn't know how much I needed that.
Just to wash myself and to be clean.
It's like I can go on,
I can do this if I can give myself a wash once a week.
It's just so relieving.
I've been running out of toilet paper. (CHUCKLES)
And I just stumbled across this dogwood, I think it's called,
but it's got this really nice soft underside to the leaf.
So I'm going to stock up.
Today, plans.
I think I saw some acacia or wattle yesterday,
and then I remembered that some wattles, the leaves,
if you scruff them up,
they have like a chemical in them that sort of acts as soap.
So I was like, "Ooh, hang on." (CHUCKLES)
Cool.
And one of the key things that I'm looking for here
is it's got this parallel venation.
So little veins on the leaves that all go in line.
It's the self care that feels so nice,
and it makes this place feel more homely.
(LAUGHS)
Yeah, baby.
(CHUCKLES) Check this out.
I got bush soap. Ha-ha-ha-ha!
I'm really happy with that.
Clean hands!
I think any day is a good day that I make my life
a little bit nicer here.
Oh. Feels so good.
When I was a little girl, I wanted to join the Cub Scouts.
But, you know, in the small country town,
girls were not allowed to be Cub Scouts.
Even after my mum marched down there and said,
"Kate can join the Cub Scouts,"
and they're like, "Nope."
That could have been that barrier to me feeling comfortable outdoors.
I don't want there to be barriers to other people.
Cool.
To be able to experience the joy of being in nature,
to be able to experience the awe
and the healing properties that nature has.
I've got all these small cuts on my hands
that aren't really healing that well.
I guess I'm just concerned that if I leave these untreated,
they could get infected, and that could see me out.
So I just want to have some sort of method
for trying to look after them.
I remember the Palawan people used to tree fern croziers,
the little unfurling leaf,
as a treatment for minor cuts and stings.
I'm finding heaps of tree ferns,
but none of them that have the croziers that I'm after.
Oh, might have found one.
Got him.
Crozier.
Just got a river stone and I'm just going to crush it up.
I love botany and I love plants.
So as an ecologist, it really excites me
that there's always more to learn.
So now I'm going to put it on these little cups.
It's actually interesting.
It looks almost like...
..I don't know, like Betadine or something on my fingers.
Ha-ha. That's cool.
I love nature.
It warms my heart and makes me feel so emotional.
It's such a blessing to be out here.
It's so nice to embrace the conditions.
It's being in it. It's witnessing it.
It's... It's appreciating those small things.
DUANE: So the last couple of days,
I've been working on a little art piece of mine.
I find it very soothing.
It takes me to another place when I do it.
Time just goes non-existent.
I love telling a story through the land, the place in space,
that has meaning.
And so...
..I've inscribed my place,
my shack,
and me being near it.
And then the rough outline of the lands and the little bays.
Bird. The fish.
The little fish and big fish.
The water flowing.
The rolling lands.
The flowing waters.
My place and me.
The hills. Flow of the water.
The other side of this axe
is the contrast of...
..me being out here.
Alone.
Remind me that I'm alone and what I need.
Connection.
Alone. Connections.
Just before I got into this...
..my mum said, "You'll be fine.
"You... You're fine by yourself."
How far from that was she?
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.
DUANE: In my family, we all have a spirit bird.
My wife's bird is the raven.
I hadn't seen a raven the whole time I've been here.
Then one flies down next to me on the branch.
(RAVEN CAWS)
Just as I was thinking about what you'd think.
Saw it as a sign just not to worry and she'll have my back.
(TEARFULLY) And that just made me feel her presence
and feel that my decision was OK.
So... (SPEAKS INDIGENOUS LANGUAGE)
Thank you.
It's been great.
(PHONE RINGS)
Hi. It's Duane. I'm officially tapping out.
That was something really special,
to have a nice swim and say farewell to the waters and thank you.
I just need social interaction.
I can't be alone.
It's plain and simple.
It showed me more of a way of how life was for my ancestors.
You can see how moiety and kinship and connection,
inter-relationships and the environment,
are so important
because that is truly what has sustained us for millennia.
It's about oneness with nature, but sharing it collectively.
Kindness action towards other people, not being alone out here.
Maybe it's a little bit of me caring maybe too much about other people,
but that's just me.
GINA: I have to stop losing weight now.
I'm turning my thoughts to food.
(COUGHS)
MIKE: It'd be nice to have a date that this finished on.
It's hard not knowing.
(SIGHS)
CHRIS: Funny how the mind can change so quickly.
Fuck!
There it is. Post-traumatic fucking stress disorder.
The kayak to me is a very, very important survival tool.
Whoop... Sinking.
Captions by Red Bee Media (c) SBS Australia 2023