When Cambridge fish and chip shop owner Regina Bird won $250,000 on season three of Big Brother in 2003, Tasmanians went crazy.

Cars were emblazoned with “Go Reggie” bumper stickers, a local bakery created biscuits decorated with Bird’s smiling face, and a huge crowd lined the streets of Hobart when Bird returned to her home state, for a parade akin to those usually reserved for royal visits or medal-bearing Olympians.

One dedicated bunch of fans – 1000 of them – assembled on Hobart’s Regatta Ground, using their bodies to spell out the reality star’s name as a way to welcome her home as her flight detoured over Hobart.

Bird gave Tasmanians their first real introduction to reality TV and a long line of Tasmanians have followed in her footsteps in the 18 years since, trying their luck on various shows. Last year alone we watched Launceston twins Kimmy and Rhi Harris score the $100,000 grand prize on House Rules, while Hobart-born singer Stellar Perry wowed judges in the final four on The Voice, while Tassie foodies Ben Milbourne and Sarah Clare returned to the kitchen on MasterChef: Back to Win. Meanwhile, Tassie swimmer Shane Gould returned to screens for Australian Survivor All Stars, Ironman Matt Bevilacqua and blogger Kirby Gibbons appeared on Australian Ninja Warrior, Tamar Valley vineyard owner Nick Onassis attempted to find love on Farmer Wants a Wife, while Hobart schoolteacher Maddy Carver was among the final eight contestants vying for the affections of Locky Gilbert on The Bachelor.

Cast your mind back further and you may remember watching 19-year-old Eboni Stocks win

Australia’s Next Top Model in 2006 (she’s now working as a real estate agent in Hobart), or cheering on Launceston flatmates Geoff Stick and Sam Hay, the first Tasmanians to appear on The Amazing Race Australia.

There have been plenty of successes, like Tasmania’s Sam Wood who found love on The Bachelor in 2015 and has gone on to build a successful fitness empire, and The Wolfe Brothers – brothers Tom and Nick Wolfe and childhood friends Brodie Rainbird and Casey Kostiuk – who have forged a successful international music career since appearing on Australia’s Got Talent in 2012.

However, there have also been plenty of challenges faced by contestants as they deal with the pitfalls of instant fame. Here we check in with some of Tasmania’s most loved reality stars to see how life has panned out since they rocketed into the spotlight.

Regina Bird

Big Brother

REGGIE Bird’s two children follow their favourite TV stars on Instagram. But they still find it hard to believe that their mum was once a darling of reality television.

Bird, 46, lives with Lucas, 11, and Mia, who turns 14 next month, on Queensland’s Gold Coast and still gets recognised regularly in the street by fans.

“When the kids were little, people would come up to me and say ‘G’day’ and the kids would say ‘Mummy, who was that, how do they know you?’,’’ Bird explains.

“It wasn’t until they got older that they realised how popular I was back in the day.

“People still recognise me in the street, all the time, it hasn’t stopped.

“Everyone is really lovely to me and they say ‘you haven’t changed, you still look the same’.’’

Bird grew up on the Tasman Peninsula – where her parents still live – and was running a fish and chip shop at Cambridge with her then husband, Adrian, when she decided to apply for Big Brother.

At age 29 she never imagined she’d go on to win the show – or how much her life would change as a result.

“I didn’t want to have to work in the fish and chip shop,’’ she says. “I wanted a holiday, that’s the only reason I applied for Big Brother.”

Her marriage ended soon after the show finished. Bird moved to Melbourne and landed her “dream job” as a Virgin Blue flight attendant. But she quit after only six months saying at the time that the job “wasn’t what I expected … flying just didn’t suit my body and my health” to again chase a TV career.

She made a TV pilot that never went to air, got fleeced by a conman, and also met her second husband, firefighter Dale Sorensen.

They split in 2012 but still share care of their two children. Being a single parent is made harder by the fact that Bird is legally blind – she has no night vision and no peripheral vision – after being diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a rare and hereditary degenerative condition.

“I still manage to get around and go for my walks, and try and get to the gym,’’ Bird says.

Her son suffers from cystic fibrosis, although Bird says since starting a new drug Lucas had a great year in 2020 with no hospital admissions and he has recently started playing basketball.

Bird says she doesn’t regret anything about her choices following Big Brother, but if she could go back in time she says she would definitely make different financial decisions so her $250,000 lasted longer.

“I find it hard now, renting – you pay shitloads for rent,’’ she says. “It’s hard with kids … I’m on a disability blind pension.’’

But despite this she remains upbeat.

“I can’t regret anything,’’ she says. “[Being in the Big Brother house] was just so much fun.’’

She keeps in touch with past contestants on Facebook. Bird has also been recording podcasts and videocasts with the Anj, Rob & Robbo show, and with friend and Big Brother veteran Rod Morris on the Elder Sibling Facebook page, which she says is “good fun”.

Bird was working from home for an anti-bullying program, but lost her job when COVID hit.

She would still love to work in TV if the opportunity came her way and would love to appear on a Big Brother All Stars show. She also dreams of writing a book about her experiences but admits time is getting away from her – she can’t believe it has been 18 years since she appeared on Big Brother.

“It doesn’t seem like it – it just seems like a couple of years ago that I was on there. It’s just crazy how time has gone so fast,’’ Bird says.

Jack Lark

Junior MasterChef

HE HAD just turned 13 when he burst onto our TV screens and wowed us with his cooking prowess on the first series of Junior MasterChef 10 years ago.

And while Jack Lark didn’t win the series, being runner-up certainly came with perks.

Not only did he win a $10,000 trust fund and a family holiday to Tokyo, but he also got to travel widely and rub shoulders with some of the world’s best-known chefs. He flew to London to cook with Heston Blumenthal (at Blumenthal’s request, no less) and to Hong Kong to cook with Suzie Wong. He appeared on the front cover of a Hong Kong food magazine and amassed a legion of fans both in Australia and overseas when Junior MasterChef screened in India and parts of Europe and Asia.

“Certainly for the next two to three years afterwards I got quite a lot of opportunities and met some fantastic people,’’ Lark recalls.

“As well as Heston and Suzie Wong I met Peter Gilmore and Maggie Beer … it was a lot for a 13 year old.’’

Fast forward to the present day and Lark is now head distiller at House of Lenna in Battery Point – where he’s worked for the past two years – making gin and whisky.

It’s an obvious career path for the 23-year-old, the son of whisky pioneer Bill Lark, and he says he finds it satisfying to create a high-quality product that people can enjoy.

But theatre is his true passion, and he’s preparing to move to Belfast later this year, to study musical theatre for a year.

Then he plans to head to London, to meet some producers and directors, and hopefully pick up some work, with London’s West End or New York’s Broadway ultimately in his sights.

Lark is meant to be overseas right now, but his original plans were delayed due to COVID.

On the plus side, he has time to direct and produce a musical at the Theatre Royal’s new studio theatre before he goes.

The show, The Old Man and the Old Moon, will have its season from September 2-11.

Tasmanians may also recognise Lark from his role as Oliver, in As You Like It, as part of Shakespeare in the Gardens at the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens early last year.

Lark, who lives with his parents in Battery Point, still loves cooking but prefers to keep it as a hobby, rather than a career. Although he admits his passion for food crosses over nicely with his job as a spirit maker.

Lark had just started Grade 7 at Taroona High School when Junior MasterChef filming began. He later attended Hobart College and completed a Bachelor of Musical Arts at UTAS.

Lark says while some reality TV contestants struggle to find their feet after being thrust into the spotlight, he feels his experiences have been overwhelmingly positive.

And if he had his time over again he’d still go on the show.

“Essentially it is a lifetime ago – 10 years is almost half my life,’’ he says. And it is certainly weird to think back on it. I’ve grown a lot since then, obviously. After I left I still communicated with quite a few contestants from the show and I think I’m one of the lucky ones. I know mental health and reality TV is a big issue but I think growing up in Tassie with such strong community and family connections worked out well for me.’’

He says the experience was definitely character building.

“I certainly grew a lot of confidence and I still get people who bring it up and have a dig, and have a bit of fun with it,’’ Lark says. “It probably forced me to mature a bit earlier.

“And it gave me a lot of connections. It is a great professional card to have up my sleeve and I think it helped me prove myself when I’ve been looking for jobs or auditioning for shows … just having this little thing that separates you from the crowd.

“Overall, I’d say the experience was a really good one.’’

Sam Wood

The Bachelor

A LOT has changed in Sam Wood’s life since he appeared on The Bachelor in 2015.

Not only did he find love with contestant Snezana Markoski, but the pair later married and welcomed two daughters (Willow, three, and Charlie, 18 months) into their family, while Wood also became a stepfather to Snezana’s older daughter Eve, who is 15.

And while his private life has flourished, so too has his fitness empire – his 28 by Sam Wood online training program has soared in popularity, particularly since the coronavirus pandemic, with more than half a million Australians having been through the program since it began five years ago.

Business doubled in 2020 alone, and Wood now employs 30 full-time staff.

Everything is tracking exactly as the 40-year-old wants it to. So it seems – for Wood, at least – that appearing on a reality TV show can help dreams come true.

But Wood says it hasn’t been without challenges.

“It’s still a really steep learning curve to be thrown into the spotlight so quickly,” Wood explains.

“It’s a lot – you go from no one knowing who you are one minute and then you can’t walk down the street without someone wanting a selfie with you … it’s pretty crazy.”

But he says having Snezana by his side every step of the way made the whole experience easier to deal with.

“Look, it’s the greatest experience of my life,’’ Wood confesses. “Not the experience itself but where I am in my life now with my girls as a result of that experience.

“Snez and I frequently laugh about it, we can’t believe it – never in our wildest dreams did we expect to meet someone the way we did and even more so for it to work out the way it has.”

Wood, who grew up in West Hobart, had never watched a single episode of The Bachelor when he decided to apply.

“I was at my gym and a lady used to come in frequently, who was obsessed with The Bachelor, and she was always pestering me, saying, ‘You should go on this show’,” Wood recalls.

“I’d never even seen an episode.”

But he applied, never expecting he’d be accepted.

And then, when he was accepted, he felt he had to go through with it. “I had this feeling of, I don’t even know what I’m getting into but if I don’t do it now I’ll always be wondering, ‘What if?’, so I don’t think I can walk away.”

Even when he entered The Bachelor mansion he’d still never watched an episode of the show, which he thinks was the key to his success.

“Retrospectively, it was the best thing I could have done,” he says of not watching old episodes. “I wasn’t doing it to be famous, I wasn’t doing it with preconceived ideas of how I should manufacture it.

“I just decided to be myself – that was the advice of my Dad actually – and whatever happens, happens. And, lucky for me, Snez was there and we clicked. And I very quickly felt it was the right thing to have done.”

Being able to use his profile to share his passion for fitness had been an added bonus.

Wood started working as a fitness instructor at the uni gym while studying at the University of Ballarat before landing a personal training position in Melbourne. He was running Gecko Sports (a chain of kids’-only gyms) prior to appearing on the show.

I own a gym and it’s been a tough year for the gym,” says Wood, who has also published two fitness books.

“But we’re really fortunate that [through his home fitness and nutrition program] we’re at-home specialists … and there’s been a huge growth in at-home, or digital, fitness. Our business doubled in 2020 and it was already an incredible business. It was the fifth birthday of 28 on Monday and how crazy to think it has gotten as busy as it has.

“I’d always hoped to get to this size but you never think it will happen. In the next five years I’m hoping it will be five times bigger again.

“I’m really excited about getting more people on the program and helping more people.”

In the coming weeks Wood will move into a new family home at Elsternwick, an inner suburb of Melbourne, which he’s been renovating for the past couple of years.

“Between working on Better Homes and Gardens and running after kids, running the gym, running the business and trying to squeeze a glass of wine in with my wife, it’s all very hectic, but it’s kind of how we like it,'’ he says.

He misses his family in Tassie – due to COVID he hasn’t been to visit for a year, the longest he’s ever been away – but he’s due to visit in March for his sister’s birthday.

In the meantime, his kids are keeping him busy.

“Willow started kindergarten this week – she turned three in October,’’ Wood reveals. “Little Charlie is 18 months and Evie is really growing up, she’s nearly 16.

“I love it,” he adds of Dad life. “I absolutely love it. I remember thinking in my twenties that I can’t wait to be a dad … you think you’ve got heaps of time. But then you blink and wake up at 35 and realise that maybe yes, I did think I would have been engaged and married and have kids by now.

“I don’t think my 25-year-old self would have ever gone on The Bachelor. And I wouldn’t have been ready. As crazy as it was, for me it was the right thing to do at the right time in my life. I’m really, really fortunate.”

Robyn and Katie Dyke

The Biggest Loser

THE Glenorchy mother and daughter duo shed a whopping 86.6kg between them to win the $200,000 grand prize on The Biggest Loser in 2013.

But coming out of The Biggest Loser house – where there was limited food, no TV, and hours of exercise each day – and back into the real world was a challenge.

“In hindsight, we came back and I felt like a really big fraud,” Robyn admits.

“Because I lost all this weight but nothing had changed in my head … we were so mixed up when we came back.”

Robyn, who was 45 when she appeared on the show, says if she had her time over again she would have ensured she and Katie, then 19, had access to a team of experts to help them work through everything that happened on the show and help them adjust to regular life.

“We should have gone to a psychologist and found a good sports physio and a dietitian,” she says. “We were naive. We didn’t deal well with the social media business. It was all just such a shock. People hated us – because we talked differently, or whatever. Other people would say, ‘You’re an inspiration’. But we weren’t an inspiration, we were overweight people who thought we’d found the answer and it wasn’t the answer.

“You’re locked in a house without any food and no TV, and all you can do is move. If you can’t lose weight [in this situation] there’s something wrong there.”

People expected Robyn to become a personal trainer after the show ended, but she just wanted to return to her normal life.

“I actually had a job I loved, a home I loved, a husband I loved and children I loved – I didn’t want to change any of that, I just wanted to change my weight problem,” she says.

Robyn initially weighed 112.1kg but shed 39kg to hit 73.1kg.

Meanwhile, Katie lost 47.6kg to hit 89.2kg, from a starting weight of 136.8kg.

Katie had desperately wanted to join the army but her weight was holding her back, which prompted Robyn, a Metro bus driver, to apply for the show.

However, Katie later discovered she had a medical condition, which prevents her from enlisting.

Both women soon gained the weight they lost.

Their world was also rocked when Robyn’s son, Ashley, died suddenly in 2016, at age 19.

“He developed epilepsy when he was 17,” Robyn explains. “It was all OK, he hadn’t had a seizure for about 12-18 months.”

But then, Robyn says, he suffered a seizure at home, in his bedroom, and rolled off his bed.

Katie found him and administered CPR until the ambulance arrived but Ashley went into a coma and died in hospital a few days later.

“It just changed everything,” Robyn says. “You realised what was important and what isn’t. I always thought if one of my children died, I’d die too. But Katie kept me going.”

Robyn recalls there was a three-month period when she could do little more than get up, have a shower, have a coffee and watch Netflix.

“Maybe The Biggest Loser experience did help [with the grief],” Robyn says, “I found strength in things about myself [in The Biggest Loser house] so maybe that helped me be able to get through this as well.

“People say ‘I don’t know how you did it’, but I don’t have choice. There were days where I’d think Katie and Craig [Robyn’s husband] would be better off without me.

“We're still navigating the whole grief thing. At the moment I feel really good, I feel like there’s peace. I know he’s with me … I hope I can maintain it.”

And most positively, both Robyn and Katie are in a much better place with their food and fitness.

“Katie and I both realised that when it comes to our relationship with food, only we can fix it. There’s no magic cure.”

Katie, now 27, has started swimming and is working with a personal trainer at the gym. She’s in a relationship, has completed studies in travel, tourism and hospitality, and now works as a bar and gaming attendant at a Hobart hotel, which she loves.

Meanwhile Robyn, now 53, is walking, swimming, doing aqua aerobics, online yoga, tai chi and has started Weight Watchers.

“I look back now and I think, ‘Oh my god, Robyn, it's been seven years since Loser, you should be on top of it’,” she says of her health. “But it’s OK. It’s not just about how you look, it’s about how you feel. It’s about self acceptance and self worth.

“And it’s the same with Katie … we’re both in a good place and heading in the right direction now.”

However it’s not without setbacks.

“I’m losing weight, I’m active and I feel good – I feel really, really good,” Robyn says. “And then I get the guilts – I think, ‘Should I be happy? My child’s dead’.

“But he would want me to be happy. When I see a little rainbow or a black cockatoo flying around I think it’s him saying, ‘You’ve got this Mum, and I’m proud of you’.”

Robyn says The Biggest Loser prizemoney was wonderful – it paid a sizeable chunk off the family's mortgage, allowed for renovations and Katie bought a car and went on a holiday.

They also made great friends on the show who they still keep in touch with.

“People say, ‘Would you do it again?’ and I’d say yes, but it would be nice to have the hindsight and have the right support,” she says. “It wasn’t what we expected but it was still a lot of fun and an adventure.”                                              ●