TARA’S TEARS
Her bid to be Sole Survivor
Tara Thorowgood saved her tears until dark in Thailand. When you see the devoted mum-of-three on Survivor New Zealand, she seems to be a calm, collected competitor, but the cameras didn’t catch her at night, when missing her kids hit her the most.
“You get really cold at night. You’re shivering and that’s when you start to think, ‘I just want to be at home cuddling my kids in front of the fire.’ That for me was the hardest bit. I had a couple of sneaky cries all to myself, lying there thinking, ‘What am I doing?’”
Having the confidence to apply for Survivor was a huge leap in the first place for Tara (45). She has struggled with depression on and off for the last 15 years.
“I think, in hindsight, both of my parents had depression. It was never talked about, though. My mum was Fijian and my dad’s a Kiwi, so she was here with no family. So basically, she struggled and she just kind of walked out when I was a baby.
“I think I had postnatal depression with all three of my babies and that was never discussed either. When you appear to have it all, from the outside looking in – house, property, business, husband – it’s like you shouldn’t be unhappy. You’ve got all that stuff. You shouldn’t be ungrateful for what you’ve got. It makes it even harder to own up to it. But I’m glad I have.”
She believes depression was actually a driving force for her to sign up for the show.
“It makes you take stock of your life – where you’re at and what you’re capable of doing. I’ve done a lot of work on my depression over the last few years, and that’s helped me and made me proud of who I am.”
Tara’s three children – Mikyla (15), Finlay (13) and AddisonRose (4) – were confident she was up for the challenge. The family were sitting together watching Survivor Australia when the ad for the Kiwi show came on. Finlay said, “Mum, you should do that. You’d be awesome!” She got through the first stage, then Mikyla whipped up an application video for her.
“They were 100% on board and really wanted me to do it. Basically, I’ve been a dedicated mum for 15 years, which is what I wanted to do. They’re at the age now where they can see that and they appreciate it.
“So they were like, ‘No, Mum. You go and do this – this is for you. It’s your time.’ We’re a unit because I’m a solo mum. If they hadn’t of wanted me to go, I wouldn’t have gone.”
She didn’t have to do a huge amount of preparation – she’s been watching Survivor on and off since Richard “The Snake” Hatch won the first US series in Borneo in 2000.
Tara keeps fit running and, living on two hectares, thinks nothing of chopping up firewood or making bonfires.
However, five weeks before she was due to go to Thailand, her dad Garry died of a heart attack. “I thought, ‘Oh, my God, can I still do this?’ But then everyone else said, ‘Come on, he wouldn’t want you to not do this.’ He was so proud that I was going to be on it.”
Tara’s glad she decided to go. “I got so much more out of the game than I ever anticipated I would. Just knowing my physical and mental strengths. I know
I’m a capable and strong person, but I really achieved a lot more than I thought I would.”
She’s made it to the final 10, so she’s going well so far, despite being the oldest contestant. “When I first scanned the others, I thought, ‘I am the oldest player by far.’ I thought there would be at least another couple in their forties, but I was the only one!”
She decided to stick to her original plan for being in the game. “I went in with the theory that the loud people create a target for themselves and they always get voted out first. I thought, ‘I’m really going to have to be strategic and quite subtle in how I play this game.’ I thought me and Lisa are going to play a similar game. We didn’t align straight away, but we definitely became friends from the start.”
Tara says the prize money isn’t the driving force for her, but she would love the title of Sole Survivor. “Winning that title would really be a recognition of my life. I feel like I’ve been a sole survivor throughout my life. My mum died of breast cancer about nine years ago and now I don’t have any parents in this world. I feel like a sole survivor and so for me, it would have just been like, ‘Here’s the title, put it on the mantlepiece.’”