Gina Chick on how to win Alone, being a role model and advice from “family” Hugh Jackman

Ahead of the second season airing, champion Gina Chick opens up on the snub that left her devastated and Hugh Jackman’s role in helping her.

Nearly a year after winning the inaugural season of Alone Australia, Gina Chick says that barely a day goes by without a complete stranger bailing her up on the street.

Chick, then a 52-year-old rewilding facilitator from New South Wales, emerged triumphant from the Tasmanian wilderness after 67 days, outlasting nine other competitors who were all younger than her and many of whom were also fitter and, on paper at least, better qualified.

Not only did she show remarkable resilience and ingenuity hunting, foraging and building shelter in the cold and wet environment around a remote lake on the west coast of the Apple Isle, her openness and vulnerability in her video diaries – including her grief at losing a child to cancer – endeared her to millions of Australians as the show became a surprise hit for SBS.

Gina Chick at the 2024 AACTA Awards this year. Picture: Getty

“I still get stopped pretty much every day by people,” Chick says. “Often emotional people and women coming to say thank you for showing that a post-menopausal woman with a real body and face can show that women don’t have to be invisible, that we have some wisdom, that there are some things that we can do.

“I get mothers and fathers coming up with their kids to say thank you for being a role model and showing that there is so much that is possible.”

But for all the love she gets in her day to day life, the new-found “celebrity” life was slightly soured by her experience on the red carpet at this year’s AACTA Awards on the Gold Coast.

As thrilled as she was to be there looking fabulous in a red gown and bare feet to celebrate the success of the show – and the best in the homegrown creative arts – it was also a crash course in the reality of living in the spotlight.

“There was this photographer on the wall who looked me up and down and just dismissed me, didn’t meet my eyes,” she recalls.

Nearly a year after winning the Alone Australia, Gina Chick says that barely a day goes by without a complete stranger bailing her up on the street. Picture: Jesse Hunniford

“I’m not young enough, pretty enough, skinny enough or famous enough. Of course I’m not and I don’t need to be – but it was amazing feeling that judgement and feeling what happened inside me when I got dismissed and didn’t get chosen. It was like this little teenage girl part of me going ‘I didn’t get chosen, I didn’t get picked’ and it really got in.”

As is her nature, Chick turned a negative into positive, sharing the experience with her 65,000 Instagram followers and encouraging anyone who has ever felt the same way to step away from the harsh judgments that can come with social media and go for a walk in nature.

“Nature doesn’t care about my arse or my wrinkles or what age I am,” she says. “Everybody is a celebrity in nature and everything is as important as everything else and that’s why I did that post. It really hit a nerve, especially with women saying thank you for naming these forces that are buffeting us but we don’t have language for.”

Chick also considered herself fortunate to have the wise counsel of her old friend Hugh Jackman – the pair met on the first day of their journalism course at Sydney’s University of Technology 35 years ago and she considers the A-list Aussie actor to be “family” – to help her deal with her new-found profile.

Gina Chick on the first season of Alone Australia in the Tasmanian wilderness.

“I have been on the phone with him quite a lot and it’s been really good because no matter what I encounter, I am the tiniest mosquito larva in the great muddy pool of celebrity.

“I am a gnat, I am the fart of a gnat in the great scheme of all of that and what he has had to deal with for decades now makes me very grateful that I don’t have to deal with that level of celebrity.”

Chick says that Alone – and the $250,000 cheque that came with winning – has changed her life in ways she can barely count. She recently hosted a documentary on the ABC about rewilding and reconnecting to nature and will soon front some episodes of Great Australian Walks.

There’s music and a memoir in the works and she’s also returning for the second season of Alone Australia, which has relocated to the South Island of New Zealand.

She and SBS presenter and superfan Darren Mara are joining forces for a companion podcast, which will aim to take devotees of the global franchise behind the scenes as well as answering viewer queries about the participants and the experience.

“We are going to be unpacking a whole bunch of juicy stuff that you don’t see on the TV,” she says. “We will be having a chat about what my impressions are of each episode and there will be a few little surprises in there as well.”

The cast of Season 2 of extreme reality TV show Alone Australia on SBS.

Despite the rigours of living alone in the elements with just ten items of survival gear, Chick says she’d sign up to do it again “in a heartbeat” and would jump at the chance to participate in a season featuring winners from the different iterations around the world. In the meantime, she has the following advice for any prospective contestants contemplating the gruelling physical and mental challenge.

BE PREPARED

“If you are thinking about going on the show, make the effort to go out into the wilderness for at least two days, completely solo and with no food. Have a crack, actually go and do it to know what it is like to be fasting, hungry, having to make a shelter, having to do all of those things before you get out there. Don’t just learn it on YouTube or practise in your back yard.”

BE YOURSELF

“Don’t try to be like anybody else because this show works when people are completely themselves and when they bring their own authentic story. When people are completely, beautifully passionately, grittily, messed-uply themselves, we fall in love. Tell your story, we want to know it and we want to hear it. Producers definitely want to hear it – and Australia wants to hear it and see it.”

BE AT ONE WITH NATURE

“I wanted to show what it’s like being a part of nature, rather than apart from nature. In a culture that tends to prioritise productivity over connection, that is a radical act. I wanted to show that it’s possible to live in harmony with nature rather than thinking it’s a problem to be solved or an enemy to be beaten. I wanted to show that there is more than the man vs wild trope.”

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BE UNCOMFORTABLE

“Resilience is all about the ability to be uncomfortable and not shy away from it. We live in a culture that pathologises discomfort and where as soon as we feel remotely uncomfortable we distract ourselves. Find a way to sit in discomfort without trying to make it stop. It means that these experiences are over before you know it. I learned that I am able to do that and it is an absolute superpower for life.”

Alone Australia, Wednesday, 7.30pm, SBS and SBS On Demand.

Originally published as Gina Chick on how to win Alone, being a role model and advice from “family” Hugh Jackman