North Queensland man Chace Leitch shares what led him to star on Alone Australia

An Army combat engineer whose favourite childhood pastime was to “bugger off” into the wild reef and rainforest backdrop of his small North Queensland town has spoken about his colourful upbringing as he stars on Alone Australia.

Originally from Seaforth, defence force combat engineer Chace Leitch stars in one of Australia's most famous survival shows. Picture: SBS

Chace Leitch has always felt at one with nature.

Growing up in the valleys surrounding the small locality of Seaforth in North Queensland, his earliest memories are all related to nature and how he has always been given a chance to explore for as long as he can remember.

At only 27, the defence force combat engineer and Quandamooka man is the youngest to star of ultimate realtiy television survival show, Alone Australia.

The show documents 10 Australian survivalists as they travel after being dropped into the extreme and wild terrain of New Zealand’s South Island, where they have to survive for as long as they can, with the last one standing winning the competition.

Leitch says he has not prepared specifically the show as he’s trained for it his whole life.

Growing up in a household that gave him the freedom to explore nature in Seaforth and its surrounds, it felt like everything was available to him, from the reef and the waterfalls to lookouts and forest.

For Leitch and his friends, growing up was an experience to be had outside, and all of them knew how to survive in nature.

Whether it was going down to the beach and staying there for a week without money or food, or taking time to “bugger off” in the mountains of Cape Hillsborough to find the coolest spot or plant no one had ever seen, he was up for it.

“There was this entire place that I had not seen or explored, and just having that little safe community, I was allowed to just go, just go explore and take the fishing rod, go over that mountain and go to the lookout, go over Shark Bay and the next bay and just walk over the mountain there,” Leitch recalls.

“Sometimes we’d come home with severe diarrhoea from drinking too much coconut water.

“Sometimes I found these sticky plants at the top of one of the mountains in Cape Hillsborough and thought ‘Geez no one else has seen this bloody plant before’.

Chace said he was the one in his group of friends who took it further in the survival game, pushing the boundaries always further or training to become a battle-hardened hunter.

“Honestly I left because I just wanted to experience life outside really, because you can easily spend your life there, like no dramas, you wouldn’t even think twice about it,” he said when I asked why he ever left.

But although he has trained for survival all his life, Leitch has found a career in the defence force would allow him to hone and sharpen the skills he had developed.

“I think all that the army has done is given me structure and a structured mind and look at things like that, whereas if I was still in Seaforth, which is not a bad thing at all, there’s no rush, there’s no hurry for anything”.

But Leitch said the experience of survival, alone, on the show had been a challenge for him, very different from any of the missions he would carry out for the army, where he would always work within a team.

“I’m always training, I’m training now,” Leitch said.

“I’m going again tomorrow out to the scrub, a little bit of hunting, this is just what I do with my time really.

“I don’t think I ever had to explain anything to [my family], they’ve known me my whole life and they love that about me.

“But they know I’m still going to be home to help when help’s needed”.

Although Leitch could not give any hints about how well he had performed on the show, he felt right at home lost in the middle of the rainforest.