MAN: The South Island of New Zealand, it's an epic place.
It's wet...
..it's cold...
..it's snowy.
If you don't respect the environment here,
it will slap you hard.
WOMAN: I just need to bring some food in.
MAN: Look at that stonker!
(LAUGHS)
MAN: Last night there was deer all around me.
That's freaking delicious.
WOMAN: I know how tough it's going to be.
Oh, my God, I miss them.
You've gotta feel safe, otherwise you'd just die out here.
It doesn't feel as bad as it looks. It feels worse.
MAN: This shit just got lit.
Jesus!
WOMAN: I'm scared enough to have my emergency tap-out in my hand.
MAN: The last person standing, they take home $250,000.
(PHONE RINGS) MAN: Somebody help me!
MAN: It's a male.
Such a sense of relief knowing I have food for a couple of days,
I'm going to take a chance and I'm gonna move to the sun.
Oh! I've arrived.
MAN: Everything's wet under foot, so you just fall over.
Not real good for a bow hunter.
It's not just surviving the hunting and the fishing.
Wow. I think I've got a couple of hundred bites on me now.
WOMAN: I've come to berry land.
(BURPS)
I've just had diarrhoea all night.
I'm wondering if that might take me out.
MAN: I've noticed that happened a few times
where I've sort of gotten a bit lightheaded.
I honestly dunno how I'm still functioning.
It's so easy to get lost in here.
I don't trust my judgement,
I don't trust my physicality,
and I sort of don't trust my own psychology either.
I feel trapped.
I feel trapped in this little spot.
I'm finished.
Yeah, I'm officially tapping out.
Yeah, I-I can't...
I can't keep going.
I've reached the limits of what I can do.
Hello!
Oh!
Sandflies...love the eyeballs.
I just...I feel like I don't trust myself,
um, out in this environment.
Um, been getting these dizzy spells
and I've, um, just feel really sort of muddled and, um...
..stretched, I suppose.
Um, yeah, I think I've reached my physical,
but probably more my mental limit as well.
I dunno if I can go another day without food in the belly.
It's, um...
Yeah, I think psychologically it's too much to deal with
and, yeah, I'm...I'm ready to...
I'm ready to call it a day.
I feel like I've...I've tried everything within my...my skillset
to be able to make a go of it here.
But the land,
it just kicked my ass.
It's a bittersweet, but I definitely don't have any regrets.
It's been a massive learning curve
for how much I don't know about my physical and mental limitations.
It's been pretty frustrating.
But I guess often the best experiences that we can have
do humble us.
Probably more than anything I just...
..I feel just an overwhelming sense of gratitude
for the experience that I've been able to have.
It really is a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Gonna work this area,
see what we can get out of it as far as worms.
Oh, straight off the cuff.
It's a good one too.
Rocking robin...
..where's your digging stick?
I come here and turn it over and you take all the worms.
You go and get yourself a digging stick.
I've got the water, shelter, fire squared away.
But then after that comes in food on the priority list.
So, I'll, uh, I'll go and sort that out.
Get some lines in the water.
Gonna be a good day.
Don't get me wrong, I want something in my stomach.
And to be honest, it probably surprised me in some ways
that I haven't been overly hungry.
It's only when I think about it that you sort of start thinking of home
and you think of your wife's potato bake
or her cauliflower and cheese sauce and things like that.
Ooh, we might have something on here.
We have - caught up in sticks and stuff.
Come on, buddy.
Oh, come on, come on, come on, come on.
Oh, it's an eel.
Sorry, buddy.
Bear with me. I'll get you back in that water.
OK, away you go.
Off...off to live for another 50 years.
Uh, once again, the ebbs and the flows.
Excited to catch something,
um, sad that it was an eel.
You would think just 'cause you've got worms on the end of a hook
and some...some line out in the water and you've seen fish,
you think, "Oh, no, food'll be easy."
I beg to differ.
I had intentionally not wanted to eat for the first week.
I wanted my body to know that you're without food
and you are to start utilising, you know,
ketosis to start eating up the fat.
Well, hopefully the eels are disappearing for the day
and the trout are taking over.
I've been, um, fishing most of the day.
I've had numerous lines in -
one, two, three, four - for part of the day,
and three for most of the day.
I'd love to give you a stack more good news,
but, hey, I'm fresh out of it.
The fish are less plentiful than I expected.
Uh, more difficult to catch,
and as yet unsuccessful in securing anything from the water.
Uh, just going along, pulling the lines in.
Just the last of, um, the last of the daylight.
Oh, we might be on.
What are we? Head cam. On, recording.
Recording.
Hey, hey, hey, we've got something.
It's on the surface, it's not an eel.
Hold on, baby.
Come on, come on. Bring it in.
Ooh, we've got a trout!
Come on, all the way, all the way. Here we go.
Ooh, yeah!
Got a trout.
Oh, so grateful for you.
Oh, look at that.
Look at that!
You beautiful thing.
Thank you.
Let's make this humane.
Thank you so much.
Let's handle this quickly.
It's all over.
Look, I thank you so much for the sustenance you will bring me.
I hope you had a beautiful life.
Let's get that fire going, baby!
Ooh-whee!
This is a confirmation that I can sustain myself here.
If there's...if there's trout like this in this water, I'm good.
Here we go. This is gonna be a... this is gonna be a great challenge.
That's it, keep going.
One fillet will be a reasonably large meal.
I'll do half a fillet and see how go.
And there's your heart.
I don't wanna overdo my intake of food
if I haven't eaten for eight days.
Last thing I want to do is feel nauseous at the end of it.
I'm about to have my first bit.
Got a few bones in him.
I can work around them.
Mm!
So good. It's coming away from the skin.
I'm gonna be able to consume the skin,
which has got lots of good fats in it.
It's not an overly fatty fish,
but if there's any fats, it'll be in the skin.
Surprisingly quite filling.
And the rest,
this cold wind, that'll... that'll keep for a day or two.
That's not a problem.
Day eight done and dusted.
Ticking them off.
Awesome. Looking forward to a good night's sleep.
(YAWNS)
Having such vivid, vivid dreams.
Dreamt I was at home last night.
In my dream, I really, really thought I was at home
and I'm looking at my feet, my bare feet, and thinking,
"How...how did I get here?
"Obviously I've finished my Alone journey early."
When I woke up, I thought, my immediate thought was,
"I don't want to be here."
And I just feel so weak.
If I had gastro at home,
John would probably make me a soup.
Don't drink my tea, Tobes.
Eugh! (LAUGHS) (CHUCKLES)
I live in a forest at home with my husband and the dogs.
Two beautiful warm little dogs that snuggle up against my tummy
and behind my knees at night-time in bed.
I feel a bit daunted by the...the idea
of being out there by myself without you guys.
John has done some really incredible adventures
like walking across Australia unassisted,
living off bush foods.
So it motivates me to perhaps go further
than I've gone before in myself.
Listen to your dreams.
I know they come to you in the night and provide the answers.
So... But I don't need to tell you any of that.
I miss him.
So I went down the hill this morning to get more water.
It was such an effort.
I so wanted to throw up.
And I just kept telling myself, "No, you're not gonna throw up,"
and stopping and breathing deeply and...
Because once I start throwing up...
..it's game over.
I can't stay hydrated if I'm throwing up my water.
It was a huge effort of will this morning not to throw up.
(BURPS)
I thought about clean, crisp celery
and that helped.
It's not a very...
..nauseating vegetable.
Right here, right now,
I don't feel like I'm... I'm gonna be here much longer.
But John said to me,
"Don't let those voices of hopelessness run the show.
"Stay with the voice that keeps on trying."
(BURPS)
Think of celery.
Crisp, clean celery.
(BURPS)
(RAIN PATTERS)
It is drizzling out here at the moment,
so...just gonna get off the beach,
just go in the forest here.
There's a little mamaku sprout.
I'm just gonna go grab him.
This is gonna be tea tonight.
Been on the boil.
It's pretty hot.
Mm, look at that - greens.
Let's try this mamaku fern.
Ooh, she's hot.
Sat on the beach today,
bored out of me skull,
thinking about home too much.
Yes, thinking about home way too much.
That's the worst part about this place -
not having anything to do.
Wow, that's boring.
That is boring.
Especially coming from a bloke like me
who doesn't do anything, rarely, ever alone.
In the army you don't even go to lunch alone.
Pretty flavourless.
Edible, though, I guess.
So now I'm just sitting here facing the...the reality
of missing my friends and my family
and Annie.
And that's the most important thing - your family.
It's the most important thing to me, and has been for a long time.
I've got a bit of a confession.
Right before I got on this show,
right before I got on the show,
I found out I was gonna be a father for the first time.
Eight weeks.
Day one when I got out here, she was eight weeks.
Like, 9.5 weeks tomorrow
and a couple days after,
you can find out whether it's a boy or a girl.
They're all big moments...
..that I'm not there for.
I'd be absolutely kidding myself
if that wasn't...wreaking havoc on my mind this whole time.
(SIGHS)
Like, I'm not struggling out here. It's not hard.
You can just fish and hunt
and shit off the shore for the rest of your bloody life,
if you wanted to.
But home's calling and it's a hard call to ignore.
The only thing keeping me here, really,
is the prospect of $250,000 to kickstart that child's life.
But every time I sit still
the voice comes back up.
How's she doing?
Not even 12 weeks yet.
You're not even out of the bloody danger period
and you're here, not there.
Dunno what's going on.
I don't know how she's doing.
So...
..far out.
(SIGHS)
So, yep, I'm gonna sleep on it.
Might talk to you guys tomorrow.
I think this is how Queenslanders enjoy the South Island.
It's just with their eyeballs.
So, I'm just finishing off the, um, the fireplace.
That fire, I think, has kept me here.
Even though I've had no food,
it's like if you're warm and cosy in your home
then that's half the battle.
I wanted to double layer the rocks
because there's a fair bit of, um...
I don't know what you'd...
It's just this peat, almost.
And I imagine
that if that really dries out,
that it could just...pew!
You know? Just like that. Pew!
So, yeah, it's coming along nicely.
Goes up there to my chimney out the back.
And I know that's my wall, but it's only temporary.
One of the problems I'm faced with
is that I can't rely on any kind of binding structure
like a clay or soil.
I'm totally relying on rocks.
I've gotta fill in all the gaps with rocks.
So it might end up looking like a bit of a mountain,
but so be it to sleep peacefully and not smoke myself out.
Everything you do requires some effort.
'Cause I don't have a lot coming in,
I'm trying to minimise my energy output.
Might see a little worm down here while I'm digging.
There's a cool breeze coming in the front door.
I think there's a nice little storm brewing,
definitely coming from the mountains.
And that breeze has just kicked in big-time.
You can see the waves on the lake -
normally very still.
So, I've turned my attention to my shelter.
Try and batten it down a bit.
Having a solid wall around you
is the best sense of security.
Every minute it's picking up big-time.
And I'm gonna keep building.
This is just a wind protection.
Haven't actually got my inside wall yet.
So I'll get my tarp ready
in case I need to string it and it starts pouring or something.
So, as you can see, I'm just sort of propping up wood at the moment
and then I'm hoping to sort of lash it all in.
(WOOD CLATTERS)
Scared the bejesus out of me!
Just trying to get some bit of protection going for the night.
Oh, that's a nice light one.
There you go, mate.
There you go.
This is my home here.
You gotta feel comfortable and safe.
Oh, that instantly feels better.
Blocked that oncoming wind.
Warm, dry, food. Warm, dry, food.
Warm, dry, food.
That's what keeps you alive.
On a personal note, I've started bleeding again.
I just had a normal cycle, now I'm having another one.
It's just God knows what.
My body gone into shock
releasing its last of its eggs for life or something.
Well, you just start to worry, you start to stress
that you're gonna lose these extra calories
and you're... it's not in the game plan.
I'm not having any more babies, so be gone!
Both kids were...
What they were like in my womb and growing inside of me
is exactly what they're like now.
One was slow and patient and rollie and...
..and my second complete opposite -
full of life, kicking and screaming.
Of all the bleeds in my life...
..I wouldn't give any of it up.
(SNIFFS)
Happy tears.
Happy to have such a beautiful family.
It looks like there was some snow up on...on the peaks up there.
Beautiful sight.
Oh.
I think what I would like to do today,
walk into the bush here
and set up a trail cam
because now we've had a...a little bit of rain
hopefully creatures will moving around a little bit more.
So I am gonna take the bow with me.
You never know what you're gonna encounter.
I've never been hunting in my life without breakfast
and food in my backpack.
With only hot water for breakfast...
..I'm just trying to conserve as much energy as possible.
I came here with about 10 kilos more than my usual weight.
It was really hard to put it on 'cause I work physically.
It's getting to crunch time now.
Like, if I'm losing weight...
I can tell I've lost some with my belt.
But how much? I got no idea.
Oh, the intersection here.
We've got a game trail coming that way, that way.
I think I'll use that tree there.
Fully aware that this challenge...
..this challenge will come to an end.
And if I haven't done my best...
(SIGHS) ..it will bug me forever.
So, I am doing my best.
My aim is to make it to 100 days if I can.
Being able to hunt with my bow
increases my chances of doing that.
Interesting.
(WHISPERS) That got me excited but...it wasn't.
Sometimes the eyes play tricks on you.
It's called wishful thinking.
Let's go back.
It was a good walk.
But, yeah, it would've been better with a...with a harvest.
Plan was to place the, um, trail cam
and, uh, I got that done.
So that's...that's good.
I'm trying to conserve energy to last as long as I possibly can.
Hunting up in the hills uses up a lot of energy.
So that's why I need to eat first.
Get a, um, a feed of, um, fish into me.
If I can't catch fish...
..I can't stay here.
Oh!
When I found out Annie was pregnant,
I didn't know what the hell to think or feel.
And so I just kept charging on forward,
like the right thing to do now is to just...just keep going.
Now I'm regretting leaving.
Well, it feels like I kind of ran away from that problem a little bit.
There it is.
10 days.
(SIGHS)
Not much compared to the original plan of a couple months.
(PHONE RINGS)
Hey, this is Chace.
I'm officially tapping out.
The severity and the reality of that situation
didn't set in till I was out here.
Mate, you're gonna be a father, you're gonna have a family soon.
I think I was pushing those thoughts to the back of my mind
on my way here.
I was hoping to use that as my fire.
But then as the veil of this land peeled those layers away,
that fire was doused and an entirely different fire was lit.
Here they come.
My ticket out of here.
G'day. How are you feeling, mate?
Bit of relief.
Yeah, bit of relief to see you coming in,
'cause I feel like I've made the right choice.
Why are you tapping out?
In the grand scheme of things, a couple months isn't much.
I'm glad I got to do this.
There's absolutely no regrets in that.
This has been amazing,
been a fantastic experience.
It's just...
there's, uh, there's priorities elsewhere.
Maybe if circumstances were a little bit different
and I wasn't...
..my heart wasn't yearning so badly,
then maybe I absolutely could go longer.
But circumstances are certainly...
..yeah, not being conducive to that, that's for sure.
And I suppose that's it.
Say goodbye to this beautiful place.
It's important to me now that I get home and take care of my family.
Yeah, it was all mental for me.
A lot of your grand plans of what you think of a survival situation
is eroded very quickly.
But, yeah, I think I've got what I came for.
And to my, uh, my child to be
I'll do everything I can to make sure you have a good life.
Alone Australia, powered by Kia.
It's the ultimate human endurance challenge.
The battle is on to survive Alone in the rugged New Zealand wilderness
with the winner taking home a prize worth $250,000.
Well, I'm somewhat recovered today.
The nausea's gone,
so physically I'm feeling a lot better.
So I think I'm gonna have enough energy to actually do something today
rather than just lie in my sleeping bag all day sleeping,
like I did yesterday.
I wonder how many kilos I've lost.
I feel like I made a mistake on day one,
setting myself up so far from the water.
Just so hard to know where the best place to camp for the long-term is.
What to do?
I feel like I need to be bringing food in
rather than exploring
to find the best place to camp.
Oh! So racked by indecision.
I'll put my hat on. Yep. Yep.
I'll be decisive about that.
Alright, hat on. Hat on.
Yep. Hat on.
There we go, a decisive action.
It's that feeling of being unsettled.
There's so many possibilities
on what's the right order to do things in.
Yeah, I feel my energy lagging already.
Yeah, that gastro has really taken it out of me. Ha!
Yeah, it's a lot more exposed than where I am.
But it's a lot closer to the water
and it's a lot closer to what I sink,
is the fishing rock.
And what am I gonna do every day?
Am I gonna fish every day?
Probably.
Oh, dilemmas, dilemmas, indecision.
So exhausted today.
This game's all about the mind, really.
But I think I'm gonna have to play a waiting game
to deal with this gastro.
Time for a little rest, I think.
(GROANS)
I'm just trying to focus on the long game here,
but I can just feel a sense of sort of hopelessness and despair.
And duckies.
I wish could eat them.
But they're pretty and they keep me company.
The sun is out for the first time, like, properly.
It is so unusual and so nice to get clear blue sky and direct sun.
So I'm trying to lap it up because I know, most likely,
it'll change in an hour.
Now I'll go back.
(GROANS)
Ooh!
Stood up too fast.
There's needs and wants
and currently there's been a lot of needs -
basically food, fire and water.
And hasn't been a lot of time or energy left for wants.
So, I have started thinking about a bit more permanent shelter.
There's the two poles...
..for an A-frame.
But that little possum has made me wonders
and I feel like I have much more energy.
Ah!
The competition as such,
or the experience as such,
is nothing like I thought it would be, in a way.
Good and bad. Good and bad.
Uh-uh! Hey! Don't peck on my bow.
Oh, here I was worrying about rats.
I think it's gonna be a far greater test,
mentally, than I anticipated.
So, anyway, what we've got here is my new permanent shelter.
I can just fit in standing.
Basically seeing how things go.
I might progress on this - build a front, build a back, get a door.
We'll see.
The wetness is another a thing.
Even on a perfect day like today,
it was still damp.
So, I think mentally that's just something
that I have to come to terms with and go,
"I'm gonna be wet and damp for maybe three months."
I was hungry today, so I took another piece of meat.
That'll be a possum drumstick again.
Can't believe how salty it tastes.
Crazy.
Wind changed.
(RAIN PATTERS)
Here comes the rain.
(THUNDER RUMBLES) Oh. Oh, shit.
Ah, talk about lucky.
Beautiful day today and now we've this thundering rain.
And after this I really want to get some cover down low.
Even if it's not windproof.
Just...just that breeze coming through with driplets.
Um, sleeping in the middle under the tarp for the moment.
I've rearranged things.
And everything else gets slightly damp...
..again.
Alone Australia, powered by Kia.
It's the ultimate human endurance challenge.
The battle is on to survive Alone in the rugged New Zealand wilderness
with the winner taking home a prize worth $250,000.
I can't quite do my pants up yet, which is a good thing.
But they keep on falling down.
I started this competition
knowing I had, you know, this excess weight that I would use
in the first few weeks,
'cause I thought I really wanna concentrate on shelter,
and food can come.
But because my periods have come back,
I feel that critical time period is right now,
where if you don't start bringing in some good quality food,
that it'll really shorten my time out here.
I've been vego for a lot of years now.
Watch where I'm walking, you never know what you might find.
I had a big struggle in applying to come here.
I knew I couldn't survive unless I ate meat.
Oh, look through here - just ferns.
I struggle with things that care for their young,
but the hard reality is if I don't get proteins, I guess,
my body's gonna start packing it in.
That might be a mamaku heart.
I wonder if the heart is still good
and, like, how long the heart's viable for.
Gonna use my axe to try and trim away these extra fronds.
They're very hairy.
There's a heart inside
and that's the edible part.
I don't wanna hack into it too much.
It's not massive, but...
..so grateful.
Ooh, it's getting softer there.
I just don't wanna waste anything,
so I'm thinking if I roast it with a bit more fibre
on the outside still left,
I can maybe crack him open.
Ooh!
My bum's on fire.
Come on, mamaku, I love you.
I can smell it.
It's time for a bit of mamaku.
(LAUGHS)
I swear I'm drooling.
Just gonna try the top section.
Oh, ooh, eeh, ow.
It's like uncooked sweet potato.
With a hint of burnt carrot.
Well, I've got a little bit of something in my belly,
but I don't know if it equates to the energy output.
It feels nice going in, though.
Maybe it's more of a mental thing until I get that protein sorted.
Gonna leave the others still a bit longer.
And just tease myself out for the whole afternoon, evening, you know?
Mm. I like that.
I think in my head right now
I'm sort of banking my long-term survival here on deer.
Which is a bit of a dangerous thing to do
because, like, I've hunted long enough to know that
shooting a deer with a trad bow
in a country which you don't know
and don't know the movements of the deer,
is slim.
Like, you might get lucky...
..but you might not.
Bit of a lookout today.
So my plan is to move out of camp,
walk to the trail cameras,
check what the trail cameras are doing,
observe, see what's moving.
(WHISPERS) I'm just about 50 metres away
from the first trail camera, so...
..I'm gonna take it real slow from here.
Just quietly check them.
(ANIMAL BARKS)
(BARKS)
Yeah, that wind - it's brutal!
I am a little bit concerned.
I did hear a couple of limbs falling.
Here, fishy, fishy!
I saw a trout in the water.
Got him!
Oh, we've got a fight on our hands.
Oh.
I'm not at full strength. I can feel my body getting weaker.
I've been feeling this decision coming for a few days.
Captions by Red Bee Media (c) SBS Australia 2024