AFL great Gavin Wanganeen on being a role model and his plan to win Survivor

Trailblazing AFL great and Brownlow winner Gavin Wanganeen reveals how he plans to win Australian Survivor.

Gavin Wanganeen achieved plenty of firsts during his stellar career playing Australian rules football.

Between making his AFL debut for Essendon in 1991 while still a teenager and retiring from Port Adelaide at the age of 33, the proud Kokatha man won two premierships (one on each team) and become the first Indigenous player to win the prestigious Brownlow Medal and the first to reach the 300 game mark.

But now, 15 years after his final game he’s still chasing firsts: at the age of 48, he wants to be the first Indigenous contestant to win Australian Survivor.

“It sort of flows nicely doesn’t it?,” Wanganeen says. “After being the first Indigenous Brownlow medallist, I thought ‘hey, there’s no Indigenous person who has won Australian Survivor yet, so wouldn’t it be great to have a crack at that as well?’.”

Football champion Gavin Wanganeen in the Queensland Outback filming the new season of Australian Survivor: Brains V Brawn.

As something of a footballing prodigy, who transcended humble beginnings in the Aboriginal Housing Trust in Northern Adelaide to become one of the most admired players of his generation, Wanganeen is used to being held up as a role model for his people and culture. It’s a legacy he still takes seriously, whether through his continuing ties to Port Adelaide, his post-football career as a professional artist or now appearing on the eighth season of the hit reality TV show, which is being billed as Brains V Brawn.

“As I went through my footy career I began to realise the importance of being a role model and being an advocate to support and encourage Aboriginal people to chase their dreams,” he says. “Coming from a disadvantaged background, I encouraged kids to chase their dreams and go about striving to have a great education and a great career and be a good role model themselves to their own family members. It’s so vital to have role models in Indigenous culture.”

Dual premiership player Gavin Wanganeen says his AFL career helped him with the rigours of Australian Survivor.

Wanganeen had been a casual fan of Channel 10’s reality show over the years, but was intrigued by the prospect of pitting himself not only against his fellow competitors to become the Sole Survivor, but also against the elements themselves. Recent seasons have been filmed in tropical Fiji, but when last year’s coronavirus pandemic shut down international travel, production shifted to Outback Queensland, on Mayi-Thakurti traditional lands near the remote town of Cloncurry. The extreme temperature swings and the rugged terrain made for brutal conditions, but Wanganeen was not deterred.

Gavin Wanganeen says his work as an artist, painting stories that remind him of his Aboriginal heritage, helped him transition to life after football. Picture MATT TURNER.

“It was definitely freezing at night – one of the hardest things was getting used to the cold – and extremely hot during the day. You can’t spend too much time out in the sun during the day because you get zapped and you have to look after your fluid intake, you don’t want to get dehydrated. You have to be on the ball in terms of trying to keep yourself fit and healthy.”

Wanganeen hit the gym to prepare his body for the rigours of some of the physical challenges, in which his Brawn tribe (which also includes an MMA fighter, professional surfer, prison officer and personal trainer) was pitted against the mentally strong, strategically savvy Brains tribe, whose members include a doctor, an artist, a political wonk and an author. He was pleasantly surprised at what his body could withstand in the desert sands and says his AFL background held him in good stead.

“I am used to running, jumping, falling over on the ground – there were a lot of challenges that were on the ground or in sand, and I have done pre-season over the summer in the sand,” he says. “So, I guess it did give me a bit of an advantage that I was used to the physical side.”

Gavin Wanganeen says he desperately missed his wife Pippa and their four daughters while in remote Queensland making Australian Survivor. Photo: Nick Clayton.

But Wanganeen knew that neither brute strength nor smarts alone would take any contestant deep into the game. As the season progresses, when tribes become intermingled, and alliances form and then shift, it’s the “well-rounded player” who has the best chance, he says, as long as they also have one other key ingredient.

“You need luck as well,” Wanganeen says. “That’s probably the most underestimated aspect of the game. It’s so unpredictable, it’s a game where anyone can win. You can come unstuck being the best strategist, and the same being the best socially. You have to have a bit of everything and not too much of the one thing.”

One thing the former champion is not lacking in is the will to win, which he says is undiminished even so many years after playing sport at the highest level.

“I will be a competitive person until the day I die,” he says with a laugh. “Even if I am in my 80s or 90s and I am having a game of tennis. If I am having an arm wrestle with someone, even if they are 10 or 15 years younger than me I am going to have a crack. I’ll go down fighting. I can’t help myself.”

Australian Survivor: Brains V Brawn, Sunday, 7.30pm, Channel 10.