We're halfway to the South Pole. Totally alone.
It's Tasmania, it's cold, it's rain, it's snow.
We're all going to leave...
See ya, guys. ..changed forever.
What have I done?
Holy fuck. What is this place?
What have I gotten myself into?
Yeah!
(SQUEALING) Did you hear that?
It's suddenly going downhill very, very fast.
Whoa-ho-ho-ho!
Like, a 60 k wind.
Yeah!
It's a fight between nature and yourself,
and that is a very hard thing to come out on top with.
(GRUNTS)
One press of a button.
(PHONE RINGING TONE)
WOMAN: Hi.
Hey, I'm officially tapping out.
I had a 1 in 10 shot at... that's a lot of money.
How do I survive this if I can't get fire?
Far out!
I want to go home.
I'm not out here for coming first if it means I'm gonna kill myself.
Give me something.
I'm trying not to lose my fucking shit. Fuck! (GRUNTS)
I'm officially tapping out. Come and grab me.
There's nothing else for me here.
Fuck. What am I doing out here?
I just need the social interaction.
I can't be alone.
I'm just getting mad PTSD triggers.
I don't know why.
(CRIES)
As much as I love being alone,
I just can't keep my thoughts at bay.
OK, that's enough.
What else is here for me? My purpose is back home, being a mum.
It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity...
(SHUDDERS)
..but it comes at a cost.
I've got a beautiful family
and I've just been away from them for too long.
My heart's pulling me away from here and I can't stop it.
I'm playing for $250,000 here, people.
Oh, shit!
I want to be an example for women, to show that anyone can survive.
Nobody breathe.
Oh, you fucker!
(CRIES)
I absolutely want to be the last woman standing.
There's no frickin' way that I'm giving up on this thing.
MIKE: It's day 51.
Sparklers, ready?
Yeah!
It's a special day.
It's my son's birthday.
G'day, Tom.
I'm sorry I couldn't be there in person,
but I've made you a mud cake
with candles that say...
Well, it's just... that's a 1 and that's a 4 - 14.
And there's 14 candles.
They're probably a bit long, you can't really read it.
But, anyway, happy birthday, mate.
(SIGHS) Yeah.
I'd love to be at home, celebrating with him,
but, uh, you know, it's much nicer to go back to that,
having felt like you've accomplished something.
I'm proud to have got to the 50s in these conditions.
They've been incredibly difficult, food-wise.
But I ain't ready to go, that's for sure.
I can't believe that I'm getting to do this.
It's gonna be so good and so bad,
probably at the same time.
When I came out here,
my strategy was to prioritise food above all else.
I've chucked on 19 kilos in two months.
I've got a 30-day buffer
to get all the systems in place, to start gathering food.
And I've got some pretty elaborate ways of doing that.
I made a kayak.
Come to Papa.
I made a fishing rod.
Yes, beauty.
I've got a pademelon trap on the ground.
Great.
Really, none of it made a difference.
Oh, dude!
I do not understand how he melted through the trip wire.
The trip wire's still there, I can see it.
Day 20, no food.
(GASPS) Shit!
There's a bloody eel on it.
How well's he hooked?
Knife's out.
Shit!
I lost it. Fuck.
Yeah, there's no points for close.
It's just...it's all or nothing.
Fuck.
Crack in the plastic.
I kind of feel like I am trying absolutely everything out here...
Shit! Ooh!
..without pay-off.
I'm tired and I'm over it right now.
It's been a lot harder trying to survive here than I expected.
I think, in general, I've probably been
a little bit on the wrong side
of the luck for this.
Oh, my goodness.
I've probably had about a week's worth of calories in seven weeks.
Whoa! That's a fish!
Holy shit, I got a fish on.
Shit.
I think I might have lost it. (WHISPERS) Bugger.
But I never questioned whether I would give up.
Oh, yeah, you beauty.
Fuck, me there's an eel on here. Yes.
It's just sitting there. Yes!
Yes!
I got three eels and a trout in one night!
Fortunes have changed in the last few days.
Magic fishy week.
This is the food that I have now.
That's basically 10 days of food.
So, I've got a decision to make.
Watch the fingers.
And it's how long do I stretch out those eels?
I need to eat half an eel a day
to meet my calories, I think.
But I've got a slight fear that if I eat all this food very quickly,
my metabolism might speed up
and then my weight may drop faster.
Alright, four fillets.
That'll probably be lunch.
So, I think I should,
for longevity's sake, err on less food.
The slower I can eat it, the better.
Things going around in my brain about how long this could last now.
What's that other person or people doing?
How are they going?
Are they laughing themselves with fat eels?
Are they just hanging on by their fingernails?
Watching their waistline decrease,
going, "Shit, I'm about to get taken out"?
I've got no idea.
And the only reason it matters
is because it depends on how long
I'll stay out here.
(SINGS) £ I follow, follow, follow
£ The rocks and the dirt and the sticky mud
£ The grit and the grime, the roots and the blood
£ The underside of the shiny things
£ Where the earthworms do
£ Their wormy things
£ I follow, follow, follow... £
Having been here for this long,
it's like the land, it just keeps revealing itself.
Oh, wow!
And the longer I'm here, the more I see it.
And the more I see it, the more I want to be here...
This is wild!
..and just work through the hardships.
OK. Get far enough back.
Alright.
So, these are the pants.
When I first came, this belt,
I had to put extra holes in this end
so that it would even do up.
That's the first... that's when I've came here.
And now...
Now it's not quite like that anymore.
My identity has always been wrapped up around a really strong body.
I mean, I am built like a brick shit-house.
Like, I'm like a Sherman tank.
And then, over the last week, my body has been shrinking.
(SIGHS)
Guess what's for breakfast?
Lobster mornay? No.
Oh, come here.
I got broth.
It's just, like, broken-down wallaby, fish, eel.
Carcasses, basically.
It's just a bunch of carcasses.
I've got about a week's worth of wallaby jerky left,
but I still need a whole bunch of other stuff in my diet
that I'm not getting.
I just spilt most of it.
I need to keep my nutrient balance in order.
So, I need greens.
Heading east.
I can feel my body just, like, screaming out for greens.
I need to range a bit further
and find those anti-oxidants and micronutrients.
I know this is a big calorie burn that I'm doing today.
I have to be really, really intelligent
about the way I burn calories
and conserve calories,
because it's simple maths.
Whatever's not going in,
my body's going to burn.
(PANTS)
What the fuck?
What is that?
Oh, there's a snake.
(WHISPERS) Oh, my God.
Fuck, can I get him?
He's a feed.
Oh, I...I don't have my hatchet.
(SIGHS)
Oh, I could just grab it and swing it. Fuck!
Oh...
I could probably get a stick that would hold it, too.
Nah, he's very alert.
Very, very, very alert.
Yeah, I'll let it go.
Uhh...
OK. I've got to concentrate.
I don't know what that snake is.
I mean, it's black. It's all black.
That looked like a nastier, more...venomous creature.
Yeah.
And the sun's dropping.
Dammit.
Seems so crazy to turn back now.
Clouds are racing across the sky.
North-east.
(THUNDER RUMBLES)
Yep, rains a-comin'.
(THUNDER RUMBLES)
MIKE: It's hailing now.
Pretty decent storm, too.
Getting pretty windy.
That's a big gust tearing through.
Yes!
If that deadfall goes, I am sprinting that way.
Yep.
Shit!
Man, this place bangs you over the head so hard with the weather,
you just...you just have to expect the worst.
(TREES CREAK)
My bed's kind of collapsed sideways.
Fuck's sake.
Fuckin' hell! What a pain in the fuckin' arse!
(CHITTERING)
(THUNDER RUMBLES)
GINA: The relentless grey rain has finally arrived.
These are the hardest days for me.
I'm stuck inside.
And I'm at a stage, now, of body fat
where I just don't want to be out in the rain...
..because wet equals cold and cold equals calories.
So, I can't produce food at the moment.
I feel trapped.
I'm scoping out where the best place for a shelter is gonna be.
My survival strategy was to just blast the shelter right away.
That goes there.
I want to have a home.
I want to have somewhere that feels like it's mine.
I got a door!
Ha!
I came in expecting the deepest hardship.
(COUGHS AND VOMITS)
My belly does not like that saw sedge soup.
I don't have all the crack skills.
I definitely reckon I burnt more calories
than I'm gonna get out of that little tree-fern heart!
But the thing that I do have
is I am completely comfortable in wild nature.
Good morning!
(IMITATES TRUMPET)
I don't feel like, you know, nature's trying to beat me
or I've got to beat it.
Look at this one!
(LAUGHS)
'Cause I feel at home.
It makes me so happy,
having a platypus just come to visit every day.
I definitely underestimated
the impact loneliness would have on me.
It'd be nice to be able to point out the platypus to somebody else.
When my daughter, Blaise, died, I made a decision.
The way I adapted
and defend myself now
against that kind of pain
is just to not need anyone.
But in the solitude of this place...
..I do want someone here.
I want a hug.
And I'm only really just seeing it now.
(CRIES)
Oh, my bubba.
It would be nice to have a village.
The hum of humans.
I really miss 'em. I miss them.
Looking at how long I can stay here,
I have to do something about this shelter so that it isn't cold.
I can't be just burning calories in the night, trying to stay warm.
I need to make a taller, roomier,
beehive rock stove...
..so I can get bigger bits of wood in
that just smoulder all day.
Life in the modern world is so comfortable.
It's so comfortable all the time.
And out here, discomfort is real, and it's every day.
And one of the reasons that I'm out here
is I'm making a stand for a way of being human
that I don't see in the modern world -
like how to live in relationship with the natural world
and get all my needs met.
(ROCKS CLATTER)
I know that I can do this.
I know that this place has everything I need.
'Cause that.
(SIGHS)
Alright, I'm having one more go.
I will not be defeated by a pile of rocks.
Oh, for fuck's sake. Really?!
I keep meeting the "No".
Aaagh!
And this land is telling me I can't.
My body is telling me I can't.
MIKE: OK, Houston, we might have a problem.
I just copped the faintest whiff
of something like, "What's that?"
This one is just starting to turn.
It's not as firm down there.
Yep.
Far out. It's gone a...a browny colour.
That's where it's...where it starts to smell, just a little bit.
And down the back here...
..it's just softer.
Shit.
Ever since I got these eels,
my main worry has been eating so much
that my metabolism speeds back up again.
So, I've tried rationing them
to get them to last longer,
with the risk of the food going off.
It's so humid here, it's hard for things to dry out.
I deliberately didn't try and preserve these ones
'cause I tried making a fish smoker about a month ago.
(SIGHS)
It worked, but it took so much effort keeping the fire going,
and I could see the fat dripping off it.
So, yeah, it was a calculated risk.
But I can't afford to throw this away.
Every little bit counts.
Every little...
You know, it's just whether my stomach can handle it or not.
Fuck it. I'm eating this shit. I don't care.
That's OK.
I feel like I'm over the hump now, for this thing, surely.
It would be a shame to get removed away
and then finding out afterwards
that it was only a three-day difference, you know?
Like, that's why everything is so critical.
That's why every eel is so critical.
That one had a very slight taste.
A very slight taste of being off.
I might be paying for this in the morning.
(EXHALES)
GINA: Today was the first day
that I woke up and I was kind of just over it.
With the rain hemming me in again today...
..I can really feel my tender spots starting to...make themselves known.
It's raining and...
..I can't get in a car and go for a drive.
I can't go to see a movie.
I can't call up a lover... or a friend.
I can't do all the things that I might do to distract myself
from the feeling of being hemmed in and trapped.
It's like this place has got a hand
and there's just a big paw
and it's just put it down on me and gone, "Doosh!
"You will stay in this feeling."
It's loneliness.
Ooh.
(WIND HOWLS)
GINA: There's so many layers of motivation to be here for me.
Some of it's personal,
some of it's interpersonal.
But the thing I've been thinking about
is how much good I can do in my world
if I win the money.
With Lee, we could buy the property where we run our camps
and set up school without walls,
set up rewilding programs and camps,
and help people be at home in the wild.
I know that this place has everything I need
and I just have to dig deeper to find it.
But if I can't be with what's inside me,
if I can't be with those feelings of vulnerability or loneliness,
then all the survival skills...
..won't help me.
My soft human skin...
..needs other humans to survive.
MIKE: Alright, let's give this eel a sniff.
I think I've got away with it.
I did not vomit last night.
But I've sniffed the meat.
There's things starting to happen.
It's a very fast process.
Yeah, this one just on the end, this is what I cut off yesterday.
It's slightly different.
I've got to cut that brown bit off.
It goes off quick.
Yeah, I just don't want to have it spreading.
(SIGHS)
I think I'm just gonna chuck them in the water.
They're not bait suitable.
Eels don't like eating other eels for bait.
I was stretching,
and, uh, now that I'm not stretching,
it's not gonna last... that long, I would say.
I've got two and a half days, maybe, of food.
(WIND HOWLS)
The water level's real low and it's raining.
Bait's pretty crap.
Chance of catching a fish is very low.
I'm just gonna minimise my energy.
This morning, I'm giving myself...
..two small pieces like that,
and they're gonna stay in there for dinner.
There it is.
My last piece of saved food.
(RAIN FALLS)
I've eaten all my food,
and, uh, the starvation hardship
starts again tomorrow.
Fuck.
The water level's probably up a metre,
so it's gone from ridiculously low to just low.
Maybe that'll switch the fish on. Hopefully.
I'm gonna try and get some worms down here.
This thing ain't done yet.
It ain't done.
There's so much riding on it.
I've gone out on a limb,
switched careers from a high-paying...flying job
to a zero-paying adventure filmmaking job.
But I am effectively living my dream.
But it's a big deal not bringing in money for our family
for two and a half years.
Nope.
I have to do everything I can to win this.
Every day brings me closer.
That's why there's no frickin' way
I am giving up on this thing.
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.
(SINGS) £ Happy birthday to me
£ Happy birthday to me
£ Happy birthday to me-e
£ Happy birthday to me. £
I'm 46.
Today.
A good day for it.
I'm proud to be 46.
I'm proud of what I've done.
I'm glad to be alive.
I've done some risky shit.
Um, I'm glad to still be here.
Good, yeah.
Ahh!
I nearly lost my mum to cancer, um, two and a half years ago.
And, uh...
Yeah.
Yeah, she pulled through it like an absolute trooper.
Yeah, and that's a real gift.
Particularly when you got the mum I've got.
Most parents, uh, shield their kids from risk a lot.
But I was very lucky that...
..uh, my mum allowed me to find my own boundaries.
I didn't need anyone to tell me, "Be careful.
"Don't do that - you might hurt yourself."
'Cause I knew, 'cause I did it and I hurt myself.
And, um, it allowed me to develop...
..an understanding of risk from as early as I can remember.
And it's what's kept me alive through all my adventures.
(THUNDER RUMBLES)
I expect a med check some time today,
so I'm gonna preen myself, like a little bird on a branch...
..so I look nice, and clean my nails,
cut my nails, trim my beard.
Yeah. Life in the bush. Easier with a mirror.
GINA: I know I've dropped weight in the last week.
It's still raining.
It's definitely, definitely getting down to
my last little drops of fuel in the tank.
I feel slow, I feel skinny.
I'm noticing that my legs are feeling really skinny.
I'm noticing that I just don't have spare energy for extraneous things.
There's a physical reality
to how much my body can actually do
and, at some point, the red line will get crossed.
Hey, Mike. How you going? Hello.
How are you this morning? Yeah, good, thanks. Yeah, come in.
Alright, good job.
Just slide that up so I've got access to it, there.
Good job, mate.
Press that down.
(PUMPS BLOOD PRESSURE MONITOR)
I'll get you to stand up now, carefully, there, Mike.
Sure.
Can I get you to spin around?
Big breaths, in and out.
(BREATHES DEEPLY)
Can you just turn and face me, there.
How are you going, from a weight point of view?
Like...
Your...certainly, you know, your muscles are much more evident now
than they have been, aren't they?
That's what they're normally like.
Normally I have abs. Yeah.
So, I can see my abs,
so that's what I aim for.
If I have more fat than that,
then I would try and do some more sit-ups and go for a run more.
Yeah.
That's the blood pressure from today.
His blood pressure is really low again.
(CONTINUES INDISTINCTLY)
I see the deliberations over there.
Hey, so, the last few times I've come and seen you,
your blood pressure's been trending downwards,
and trending down from what you start as a normal value
to something that's been getting more and more dangerous,
and it's the same again today.
The values that I've measured are unsafe.
It's an indicator of just how significant
the effect of the malnutrition is having on your body.
So, your ability to compensate
and to maintain normal blood pressure
isn't there when you go from sitting to standing anymore.
Your value, when you're lying down, is at a value
that if you were in hospital, if you were in the community,
people would be worried about.
It's a function of all these things,
of how, probably, little protein you've had to eat
over the last little while.
Well, yeah.
Your deficiency in electrolytes and minerals
that would have occurred over this time.
It's not safe for you to remain here.
The safest thing to do
is to...is to extract you.
That seems... Honestly...
It seems...
You can't... Can you tell me the values?
Is it the upper value or the lower value?
The upper value.
(SIGHS)
So, um...
..is that it - I'm out?
I'm afraid so, Mike.
(SIGHS)
There's probably nothing I can say, is there?
Yeah.
Sorry.
(MUTTERS INDISTINCTLY)
I feel really disappointed.
Winning was very important to me, for many reasons.
You know, I wanted to bring the money home for our family,
and professionally, you know, this is my day job,
this kind of thing.
So, in some ways, I feel a little embarrassed that I didn't win it.
But I could not have tried any harder.
Dammit. I still haven't got a pademelon.
I was so close.
Luck can go against you, and it did on this occasion.
The most important thing I'd want my kids to take away from it
is that I haven't given up.
I'm not the best at everything I do,
but I've always gone 100%
at the things that mean a lot to me that I've tried.
This is one of them.
Ah...
Cooee!
That's my last cooee for this joint.
It's been good.
I'm looking forward to getting home
and just pressing the button
and going back to my normal life, you know?
'Cause really, people always say
there's nothing more important than family, and it's true.
And I appreciate it even more after doing this.
I didn't win,
but I'm really, really grateful for this experience, you know?
When you put yourself outside your comfort zone on an adventure,
you experience all of the things that life can throw at you.
Life is better with adventure.
VOICEOVER: Alone Australia is brought to you by Kia.
Experience the ultimate human endurance
as ten contestants battle to survive alone in the Tasmanian wilderness,
with the winner taking home a prize worth $250,000.
(INDIGENOUS SINGING)
GINA: It's really strange not knowing when this will end.
When the rain just goes on for days and days
and I'm stuck in my shelter, that thought definitely pops up.
But when I really commit, it's to the absolute end.
Morning, Gina. How are you? Good, thanks. How are you?
We're just here for the med checks.
I'll follow you.
Good job. Good job. There we go.
OK.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you.
Alright, so Gina, 67 days. 67 days.
Now that it's sunny, I'm good.
The last, probably week to 10 days, has been hard.
I love being here.
But I have such a sense of gratitude for my family,
and I just want to love them up.
I want to hear someone else's stories.
I want to hear someone else's life.
I want to... I want to roll around in the love of my family
and my friends.
I find myself saying,
"When I get out of here, I'm going to dot, dot, dot."
So when I get out of here,
I'm going to take my friends out to dinner.
When I get out of here,
I'm gonna give my mum the biggest hug she's ever had in her life, you know?
When I get out of here, I'm gonna take my niece Amy out camping.
They're the kinds of things.
it's more that this place is giving me a...
No fucking way.
What the fuck? Yeah.
Holy f... Oh, my f... God. You did it.
Oh, you're fucking, you're here?
Can I give you a hug? Yes.
Yay. No.
Well, fucking done. Well, fucking done.
You did it. You did it. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.
You're such a fucking legend. Oh, my God.
I fucking knew it. And I still can't believe it.
Well done.
You did so fucking well. (SOBS)
Oh, my God, oh, my God. You did so fucking well.
I can't believe...
I can't wait. I can't wait to hear your stories.
Oh...
You've won, Gina. You've won.
Oh, my God. Yeah.
What is it now, like, day 67? 67.
Yeah.
Oh, my God.
Yay.
You did it. You did it.
What the actual fuck?
I won.
I don't believe it actually, I...
(CHUCKLES)
Whoo!
Look at this amazing thing.
Yeah, that's it.
Oh, wait, hang on. There we go. There we go.
Wow.
So, this is the nest. It's beautiful.
This is my nest.
Amazing.
I haven't been focused on beating other people,
winning the competition.
I've been focused on just solving my needs every day.
I've never said I'm an expert survivalist and I never will.
Like, I'm not. I know I'm not.
But what I found was that
I could let my instincts and the land teach me what I needed to know.
I really wanted to show
that there is a way of being at home in the wild.
There's a way of connecting with an ancestral way of being
that isn't about dominating nature.
It isn't about having all the bells and whistles and the tricks.
I want to thank the Paloa for the tens of thousands of years
they've lived in right relationship and harmony with this country,
leaving footprints for me to follow.
Thanks for coming.
It had to be you. Yeah. Yeah.
Oh, this is gonna hurt. Mmm.
Oh, I just got the first inkling of it.
Mm-hm.
This is gonna hurt.
Coming in for this, I said that the Gina who walked in
would not be the same as the Gina who walked out.
I'm leaving this place more windswept,
more grateful, and more in love than I've ever been in my life.
Captions by Red Bee Media (c) SBS Australia 2023