No place like home
As Australian Survivor returns, things look a little different this season. Host Jonathan LaPaglia tells Danielle McGrane why location really is everything.
The Australian Outback can be dangerous, unforgiving and scary – so really, it’s the perfect setting for Survivor.
After three of the recent Aussie seasons have taken place in Fiji, COVID put paid to plans to film another one overseas so producers looked closer to home for the upcoming season.
It turns out, the Outback in far-north Queensland offered an even more challenging landscape than they’d ever experienced, which means this could be one of the most exciting seasons of Australian Survivor yet.
“There’s no coast, we’re deep in the Outback and it couldn’t be more different than our previous locations. It’s that arid, dry Outback that really is unique to Australia, I don’t think anywhere else in the world looks like it. Visually, it’s stunning. But what you don’t get from the visuals is just how difficult it is for the players and for the crew to work out there,” host Jonathan LaPaglia said.
And while they may have ditched the tropics this season, they’ve certainly not left behind the heat.
“The temperatures are extreme, it goes from 40 degrees during the day to six or seven degrees at night, and there’s a plethora of wildlife that can kill you,” he said.
On top of all of that, the food situation is very different in the Outback compared to the islands of Fiji.
“In tropical locations there’s coconuts, bananas, papayas, fish in the ocean – there’s none of that in the Outback. So all these things have added a level of difficulty to the game that I think takes it in a completely different direction,” LaPaglia said.
“You need to know your stuff and each of the camps were next to billabongs which became a food source for them for quite a while, until they completely fished the billabong dry.”
The contestants have been pitched into two different camps this season – brains versus brawn, basically splitting them along mental and physical strengths.
But Cloncurry in farnorth Queensland proved challenging for all of them.
“It was definitely tough for the contestants,” LaPaglia said.
“Every season we have a few that question why they even started in the first place and this year we had quite a number who really struggled and I think that’s because of the environment.
“I don’t think anyone can really prepare you for it unless you’ve done it before. We have one contestant who’s a survivalist, so he is no stranger to it. There’s another contestant who’s from a farm so he kind of knew what he was getting into, but as for everyone else, I think it was quite a shock to the system.”
Like every long-running show, it’s not a bad idea to mix things up after a few seasons but even LaPaglia wasn’t exactly sure how this new environment would work, considering the show’s format.
“I had questions about it, like ‘What about the water challenges?’, but they have a dam there so water challenges were done in the dam. But there are less water challenges this season, most of the challenges are landbased,” he said.
“The challenge team was really creative in adapting to the new environment so I think we’ve got some really interesting challenges this year. The team really put their creative caps on and came up with some quite inventive things. I think overall it’s going to be a lot different from previous seasons but it’s still the game, it’s the same format so it’s not going to be so different that you’ll be asking ‘What is this?’, but it definitely adds a whole other element to it and I think the environment will become a big character in the show.”
LaPaglia, who lives in Los Angeles, has been dealing with his own challenges over the past year dealing with COVID in the US, so coming back to Australia for the filming, where there’s been far more freedom, felt like a bit of a shock to the system.
“I was in the US for most of the pandemic. I was in lockdown for over 12 months in LA, I barely left my house and when I did it was in a mask and trying to avoid contact with other people so when I came here, once I got out of quarantine, it was really quite confronting to see people without masks, and people right next to me,” he said.
“It was the first time I’d eaten in a restaurant in 12 months, and the first time
I’d gone to a gym in 12 months. So I definitely had some PTSD when I first arrived and there was definitely some anxieties going on.”
Pivoting to Australia for the filming has been extreme, to say the least, and not just for the contestants.
“I certainly felt it was the hardest season so far and I know a lot of the crew felt the same way. The conditions are extreme. I would be out for the challenge for an hour in that 40 degree heat and my brain would just melt. It was just really tough,” LaPaglia said.
“The distances between the locations of the challenges and tribes were also greater than they have been in the past so we were travelling about four hours every day back and forth on unpaved roads that were really rough. And when you do that everyday – I think I did almost 10,000 kilometres during the shoot – on top of everything else it takes it out of you, so I found this season tough.
“I was literally working from the minute I got up in the morning to the minute I went to bed at night. It was pretty nuts.”
But the difficulties are what makes this show, and this season in particular, great.
“I find there’s an inverse relationship between the ease of the shoot and what the final product is, so if it’s really really hard it ends up being a good show,” LaPaglia said.
“By that measure this should be the best season yet because it was probably the hardest one we’ve ever shot.”
Australian Survivor, starts Sunday, 7.30pm, 10