Original subtitles

I think I've made the choice of where my shelter will be.

We're 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.

I have not seen a single thing alive.

Just quiet and nothing.

What if I just can't catch anything?

I wonder when I'm going to crack.

This is a super tough environment.

I want to go home.

The COVID's irritating your heart and that's causing it to race.

I need to medically take you out the field.

Who wants to sit out there cold, wet and miserable the longest? Oh,

congratulations, you win, you know.

Yes. I'm officially tapping out.

I don't know what's going to happen.

Something better fucking change.

Holy...

What is this place?

What have I gotten myself into?

We have to document this whole experience while trying to survive at

the same time.

Check it out.

Like 60k minutes.

Mother Nature's kicking my ass.

This experience is just as much a mind game as it is a

survival game.

We got dinner!

Oh, you fucker!

Suddenly going downhill very, very fast.

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.

Told you to get up.

And I really haven't eaten anything since I got here.

The tough part's gonna 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've put on as much weight as I could. I've got 19

kilos in two months.

It feels like I've got back fat.

I think this is about almost 30 days of free

time, almost like I've got a 30-day buffer. Like 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 it

actually wobbles first time my stomach i've ever 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

I need to gather food to feed my body.

I'm going to make a set line on a pole for fishing.

And I want to keep the bendy tip on this to 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.

It doesn't matter that it's shabby.

It matters that it just does the job.

Right and I'm all ready to go to go find a big chunky piece of bait.

There's a tree over there I noticed even last night had some bore holes in it and

I'm hoping that they're kind of similar to witchetty grubs so I'm gonna have a

dig around in there.

Jackpot!

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 of years for bait.

Oh yeah, look how long he is.

Awesome.

I mean, you just couldn't get a better bait than that.

All right, let's go stick him on a hook.

Sorry, mate, this is going to hurt.

I'll go in through the head first so it puts him out of his misery.

Yum, yum.

All right, 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 fly 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 just do some more now just to increase the likelihood I 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.

It's the raven.

So I'm just going 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 it's just my body slowing down.

I love botany and I love plants and I've 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 head.

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 lady grass you can eat the very bottom bit So this is what I was looking

for this nice white Beautiful white here. That's what I'm looking for 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.

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.

What are you looking at?

Elsie gave birth to Juno six months ago, and Juno's just the happiest little baby

ever. And by the time you come back, 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.

I think it's pretty important for me to try and, you know, get into fishing and

get some protein happening if I want to stay out here long term.

Found this really cool sort of a whippy stick that I thought could make a great

little 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 call them night crawlers.

I might actually use him in pieces.

So mean.

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.

I don't feel right about this spot.

It all feels a little bit harder maybe without the calories coming in.

I'm 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.

Had some dreams about eating last night.

I was eating some scallops and chicken wings and, oh, heaps of bread.

I'm going to get some food.

All right.

I think it's time to go for a little bit of a hunt.

Here, possum possums.

Oh, he's got another sentry.

And 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.

I reckon that's what I'll do with one. This is nuts.

It's just a matter of finding.

Nice log.

There's a beautiful log there, but it all just seems so wet.

If I was a possum, I'd be like, stuff that.

I'm not sleeping in there.

Oh, here we go.

Okay, what have we got here?

Oh, you know what?

Is that possum, sir?

It's just to the right of that.

No way.

Let's go and have a look around the corner here.

Seemed it was about there.

Even if that is a possum, he's 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?

I wish you could feel what it's really like to be here.

It's like, I mean, 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 what it's all about.

Put them on 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 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.

Eight and a half months in the Middle East, they're 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.

A bit harder to find than the southern rock lobsters.

going home empty-handed again yeah it's gonna be a real issue if i

can't get any um 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.

Not even a bird.

Come on. Give me something.

Just give me something to be like, hey.

Hey, buddy, how you going?

Great with a rifle, great with guns, great with a bow.

Like I'm so used to using them that when it comes to being without them, it's

very hard as well.

Day three of no food.

I'm starting to feel it.

I really am starting to feel it.

So 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.

You've got the mushrooms too.

You eat one of them, you wake up in four days time. That'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 up so far.

You're beating me.

You're winning.

Absolutely wrecking me.

I chucked my little line in.

with just a worm that I found last night.

And I've got an eel, I think.

Holy shit, yes.

Yeah, baby.

It is, it's an eel.

I'm gonna dong it.

Thank you.

Now what do I do?

All right, 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

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.

Okay, 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.

I don't want to eat the eel.

Okay, it's alright.

I'm gonna eat the eel.

It's gonna be delicious.

Mmm, it's oily.

Wow, it's so oily.

It's okay.

It might never matter.

Living the dream.

Golly.

It's so oily.

Clearly I'm not starving enough.

Fuck, it's disgusting.

I want to be getting my nutrients straight away.

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.

Efficient. I can keep going on pretty much nothing, and that can be a little

bit of an advantage.

Oh.

Oh,

sour.

Oh, like a bloody... ..hoxon or something on my tongue.

That was silly.

Foraging for bush tucker is what I know and what I enjoy doing.

Found a little coffee berry.

Still has its fruits on.

A couple there.

Dose them 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.

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 Our

house is being renovated for a couple of rooms for the children

and we are currently living in a caravan

I'm doing this for my own self-journey, but also to financially benefit my

family.

They are sacrificing time without their father.

They are sacrificing living in a caravan.

They're tearing up.

This experience is going to be so hard.

I love you, Daddy.

I love you so much. I'll miss you.

Oh dear.

That is my first hole in my tarp.

No!

Pretty shitty shelter if it starts picking up 35k wind.

To be successful in this, I need to keep warm and dry.

So I need to get started on my permanent shelter.

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.

No food.

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 them up at the top, you want to keep even spacing along here.

And we're gonna 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, um... You know, you kind of don't really have any right

to have it unless things got really, really nasty.

Cos, 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, about 90 beers a

week.

And that's with having some days off.

What a dickhead, eh?

That's not who I want to be, who I am.

And then everything just came crashing down a few months later.

Had a bit of a breakdown.

It's just the booze.

Booze bringing out the demons.

Feels good to talk about it, even though I'm talking to this net.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The kayak is the only way to solve it.

If I troll 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.

I hope that this 20 kilo fat layer lasts 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 things that go on 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.

I also need to make myself some tools.

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.

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 debarking it like this.

One is that there's less sharp edges that can puncture the kayak.

And 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, 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.

Oh, Rex Hunt, he'd be proud.

Yabba yabba doo, that's all, folks.

Is that him? I think he did something like that.

What if I just can't catch anything?

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.

Oh, I'm so happy.

Whoa.

We got dinner.

I got a bloody fish. It's me first trout too.

Okay, we're gonna put him to sleep.

That's it.

Oh, we're having fish soup for dinner.

I was getting pretty disheartened before, I'll be honest.

All right, let's get out of this rain.

I can catch food.

I can survive.

Don't even need a possum.

You guys are safe now.

It's good to be alive, isn't it? It's good to be alive.

Look at the ground. Even the ground looks cool.

Everything's really pretty.

Just not to live and survive in.

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.

I'm not even putting weight on it. Just...

Fuck.

Don't lose your shit, mate.

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.

Ah, fuck.

Can't even fucking walk here.

Fuck me dead.

It's like I'm ice skating here.

I'm fucking trying to tell you that much.

I'm trying to lose my fucking shit. Fuck!

This is really getting on my nerves.

Just keep pushing, Peter. Just keep pushing.

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.

fucking hurt 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

That hurt my knee.

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.

My first night I set up the tarp wrong and it was raining a lot and all the

water ended up coming into 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 that's been allocated to me and I didn't say anything and that's not

saying that they're not here I just didn't see him I

Don't know what to do

I

Will make that call

This is something

that I can't do

And I thought I could, but I can't.

There's nothing else for me here.

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.

so we'll see what happens.

Here they come.

My saviors.

What happened?

I had a fall earlier on today, and I thought I was going to be okay, but it's

just gotten a lot worse.

My knee's just blown out, so there's not much else I can do, really.

I pushed hard, trying to find something to hunt, to eat. I haven't eaten in

three and a bit days, so... Yeah, and I just...

It'll be stupid for me to push further.

Okay, so can you just point to where it's sore?

There. Just there, is it? Yep. Okay.

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 was 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.

I'm really enclosed here.

It takes this long to go one metre. It's not a good sign.

I'm exhausted.

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.

No, 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.

If you or someone you know needs support, contact Lifeline 13 11 14.

Text 0477 13 11 14.

Lifeline.org.au.

Beyond Blue.

1300 224 636.

Beyondblue.org.au.

Open Arms. Veterans and Families Counselling.

1800 011 046.

openarms.gov.au