Wait, Tony Armstrong ate what?

There are many unexpected places Tony Armstrong’s career has taken him since his stratospheric rise from News Breakfast sports host to double Logie winner (most popular new talent and most popular presenter) and then Gold Logie nominee in just four short years, but none so unexpected as Eat the Invaders.

The six-part documentary finds him in the avant-garde surroundings of Tasmania’s Mona Museum, trying to eat his way out of Australia’s invasive species problem. It’s not so much “lions and tigers and bears … oh my!” and more “rabbits, cane toads, carp, camels and cats and … oh, deer.”

Tony Armstrong, Kirsha Kaechele and Vince Trim.Credit: ABC TV

“I ate camel testicle,” he says over Zoom from his holiday spot on the NSW North Coast. “I don’t know if that made the cut because we all went ‘blurrrrrgh’. So, with all due respect to camels, no thank you, but I can say I’ll try anything once. So I keep that unblemished record of fearlessness intact.”

That fearlessness even extended to eating feral cats in the remote Indigenous community of Kiwirrkurra in Western Australia, where the felines are traditionally hunted – and then eaten – to protect the local bilby population.

“I ate and loved it,” says Armstrong. “It was honestly so nice. I know I sound like a freak saying that, but It was the way that we hunted the cat as well, out with the ladies in the Western Desert. They were looking after their totems and they were protecting their lands.

“We talk about ethical eating, and I don’t think it gets more ethical than that. And then we cooked it in the dirt – wrapped in foil – and it tasted like the yummiest rotisserie chicken I’ve ever had.

Tony Armstrong filming Eat The Invaders.Credit: ABC TV

“We’re not telling people to kill your cat and eat it. It’s more [making cat owners think], ‘I need to maybe change my habits as a cat owner.’ Don’t let your cat out. If they get out, they are a killing machine, and that’s what we want people to get.”

As well as hunting with the women of Kiwirrkurra, Armstrong joins others on the front line of feral pest eradication, observing how rabbits, camels and deer are caught, as well as cane toads (the only animal he wasn’t allowed to eat) and carp, aka “dumpster dolphins”.

He also consults invasion biologists professors Andrew Lowe and Phill Cassey about the ethical implications of creating a market for eating the animals before returning to Mona to dine with artist Kirsha Kaechele, whose surrealist art book Eat the Problem inspired the show, and high-profile guests to sample dishes featuring the pest created by Mona head chef Vince Trim.

It’s a wild idea – quite literally – especially when you consider invasive species have a devastating effect on Australia’s biodiversity, damaging native soils, plants and animals. Feral cats, for example, are believed to kill more than 1.5 billion native mammals, birds, reptiles and frogs each year. Wild rabbits, meanwhile, which started as a population of just 13 when they were first introduced by grazier Thomas Austin in 1859 in Victoria, are now thought to number more than 200 million.

Sounds fishy? Tony Armstrong in Eat The Invaders.Credit: ABC TV

However, the idea that we simply eat our way out of the problem hasn’t come without criticism. When Kaechele’s book, with its complementary exhibition, was published in 2019, it was labelled “little more than an exquisitely designed elitist spectacle” that failed to “to take into consideration the complex realities this proposition entails”, by University of Tasmania lecturer Dr Svenja Kratz in a piece written for The Conversation.

In December, the Invasive Species Council also criticised the documentary without having seen it, saying it was “well-intentioned” but a “fantasy” and “could make matters worse”.

“The show, by showcasing these animals as food, risks making their presence more desirable – creating a dangerous paradox that could lead to the further spread of some species. We have particular concerns about the show promoting carp, camels and deer,” wrote Carol Booth, a policy analyst for the council, in an opinion piece for this masthead

Armstrong, however, says Eat the Invaders isn’t as straightforward about promoting the consumption of invasive pests – it’s more about creatively tackling a challenging problem.

Tony Armstrong with other 2024 Good Logie nominees.Credit: Jessica Hromas

“Hopefully, when they [the Invasive Species Council] do watch it, if they do watch it, they can see that we’re not being flippant,” says Armstrong. “This isn’t necessarily in response to them; it’s just general, but the show isn’t actually a cooking show.

“It’s a show about ways of thinking. We use this sort of punk rock, almost shocking title and shocking premise as a way to then get people to think about the ways in which they might own their cats, the ways in which the food [we eat on the show] impacts biodiversity. Eating our way out of the problem is just our way of being at the front of the jungle, cutting through the shrubs so that behind it, there are different ways of thinking.”

In a weird way, Eat the Invaders dovetails neatly into Armstrong’s other Australiana projects on the ABC, particularly Great Australian Stuff and Tony Armstrong’s Extra-Ordinary Things. He also has another documentary in the works, End Game, about racism in Australian sport, which will air in 2025.

It’s been quite the rise, considering he has only been on the ABC since 2020, when he joined as a sports producer and presenter, before being elevated to the News Breakfast sports presenting role in 2021. It’s also something Armstrong is still getting his head around. He left News Breakfast in October to recalibrate after three years of brutally early starts.

“It’s like, ‘What the f--- is going on,’” he says, laughing, of his rapid rise.

“I’ve definitely got impostor syndrome, that’s for sure. But, I guess, timing is everything. People got a decade’s worth of News Breakfast in like 18 months [during COVID], so they saw way more of me than they would have. So I think that’s got a lot to do with it [his popularity and visibility]; everyone was stuck at home watching the ABC, and I was the part of the news that wasn’t COVID. I was kind of like, ‘Oh my god, yes, we could talk about sport. We don’t have to talk about [case] numbers.’ So I put a lot of what’s happened down to timing and taking the opportunity when it came.”

Does he have any advice for News Breakfast’s new full-time host, James Glenday, and new full-time sports presenter, Catherine Murphy?

“They know this because I say it to anyone who asks,” says Armstrong. “Care heaps about it. Care heaps about your effort, and then as soon as you’ve done it, you can’t worry about what anyone else thinks. Because you don’t get to choose how people react to what you’re doing and if you make a mistake on it, honestly, it’s not the end of the world. Guess what? You’ll be on air tomorrow, and everyone will have forgotten.

“I think that’s the thing. It’s the most daunting when you’re going in, you’re like, ‘Shit. This is a huge audience. What if I say a name wrong?’ And then you realise, if you’re trying your best, you’re allowed to make mistakes, right?”

Eat the Invaders premieres on Tuesday, January 7, at 8.30pm on the ABC.

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