Your Guide To ‘Australian Survivor’ Feat. An Angry Boomer, Liars And A Whole Lot Of White People

After nearly a full year of hype and 50,000 applications from around the country, Australian Survivor is here. The first episode kicked off last night under the strict eye of Anthony LaPaglia’s stern and terrifyingly muscled brother, Jonathan, and the audience response was mostly positive. Unlike Channel Nine’s 2002 crack at the franchise, the production values were great and the show seemed to have all the familiar hallmarks of its enduringly successful US counterpart.

But what of the contestants? Here’s an early look at who you’ll be watching starve on a remote beach in Samoa for the next few months:

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Conner

Conner is a 23-year-old law student from Canberra who’s previously volunteered as a UN youth facilitator and a firefighter in his Victorian hometown. He’s also presumably spent the remaining other moments of his life scouring every episode of Survivor for tactics and strategies. Conner is very excited. He has ready-made responses to Ripped LaPaglia’s questions about The Divine Complexity Of The Game. He’s explaining the process of how to make a fire with someone’s spectacles despite having never actually done it before.

Unfortunately within a few hours of getting to the beach, he severely burns his hand by grabbing a hot stick in the fire. The “go-getter with a thirst for knowledge” then spends approximately five hours sitting alone in the sea swearing. 

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Craig

Craig summarily describes himself as “a very proud gay man”. “I can cook. I listen to Beyoncé. I can be a bitch,” he says while somehow trying to prove each point with his face.

This is pretty much all we learn about Craig, but I’m down with it. Considering he’s already started slyly asserting his dominance over the alpha males by calling them “babes”, he should be a great long-term player to watch.

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Bianca

Bianca is but a humble insurance worker.

“Ha ha, my job is pretty mind-numbing,” she says, face artfully obscured behind some leaves.

Bianca is stoked to be here, both out of an office and holding a chicken with a stranger.

“This place is a holiday, ha ha!”

Bianca will not take any more questions about her job which is both vaguely “in insurance” and, as she assures the tribe many times, “mind-numbing”.

“Ha ha, all right gotta go.”

Bianca has a plan.

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Phoebe

Phoebe is very smart and highly-skilled at “getting information out of people” but she’s not going to let everyone else know that.

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Evan

Evan is a drama teacher and thinks he can “counterfeit the deep tragedian, speak and look back and pry on every side, tremble and start at wagging of a straw” (or something), but he’s not going to let anyone else know that.

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Lee

Lee is a 40-year-old former pro-cricketeer who is doing all this for his kids and thinks you don’t have to lie or cheat to win the game (aw). His abs’ debut on TV comes at a very inconvenient time when the internet isn’t sure whether you’re allowed to call someone “daddy” or not.

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El

El tells us she’s “third-generation army”. “It’s the core of who I am”.

This is about all we find out about her. But between those pink dungarees and her charity organisations supporting homeless vets and women in the defence force I’m keen to see more. El is absolutely the women who emasculates the bros in group challenges and gets voted out a week later. Let the games begin.

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Flick

Flick is a bartender and former meter maid from the Gold Coast. She plans to use her sexuality to dupe all the men into trusting her and you know what, it’s a fucking good plan.

Survivor has a long line of women who’ve dominated the game by outwardly kickin’ back in bikinis and secretly playing with the rest of the group like puppets. When her tribe hit the beach, Flick was one of the first to talk tactics and she also single-handedly saved poor baby Conner from his literal sea of regrets by offering an alliance.

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Sam

Sam seems like a really great guy. He’s a team player who helps out around camp. He directs people to jobs without being bossy. In his normal life, he runs a mental health and suicide prevention organisation.

But he’s also 100 percent Flick’s first victim.

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Andrew

Andrew is the result of someone taking every single negative thought you had about adults when you were a kid, blending them all up, and pouring the infuriating result into a mid-range Tarocash suit.

“I hate the outdoors,” he says, hurtling voluntarily into the wilderness.

“This is business,” he says, excreting buckets of tropic-grade sweat into a thick cotton blend shirt on the beach.

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Barry 

Is… is Barry is the only person on this show who is not white? I don’t think we’ve heard Barry say a single word, but his looks speak for themselves.

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Peter

Peter’s bio tells us he is an air traffic controller whose hobbies include mountaineering, scuba diving, running, kayaking. Peter’s on-screen presence so far tells us he is a friendly art curator whose accidentally followed his grand niece to Samoa.

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Kylie

Kylie is a firefighter and all-round badass who has enormous muscles and could definitely put me in a sleeper hold. She is also a mother of three, so here are the obligatory shots of her confirming she loves them:

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Sue

Sue, 59, is the self-described “nana who goes down the speed slide at the water park and gets a wedgie”. When someone calls her a “badass”, she asks “what’s wrong with my ass?”

A variety of people then give inspirational speeches about her “vigour” and “infectious energy” while the Jurassic Park music starts playing in the background, but she just swings around a machete and tries to talk about arses some more.

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Rohan

Rohan is a model who “completely breaks the stereotype”. Rohan went to uni! Rohan cares about the environment! Rohan was on the Dean’s list at Melbourne University! It is a good thing Rohan is keeping this to himself for the moment because honestly, it doesn’t make him all that endearing.

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Matt

Matt is a fucking magician who can allegedly “read minds” but has so far only been given screen time to talk about the fact “fire is important”.

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Nick

Nick loves Survivor so much I feel nervous for him. He’s seen every episode, he had a Survivor-themed 21st, and he’s been in very serious obstacle-course-in-the-backyard-and-hypnosis-to-cure-fear-of-rats training ever since he found out he was on the show.

He needs to help out around camp so people know he’s useful, but he can’t be seen as a leader. He needs to form bonds with people to build alliances in the game, but he can’t isolate others. He needs to excel in physical competition, but not so much that he’s a threat. All of Nick’s emotions are sizzling beneath the surface of his skin threatening to break through and consume him at any minute. This is it. This is his shot. And he really, really knows it.

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Brooke, Tegan, Kate, Kylie, Jennah-Louise

Look, there are 24 contestants. I understand that the first episode can’t give us meaningful introductions to each of them. It seems less than ideal that all the least memorable people were women though.

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Kat

As a glam brand manager for the West Australian Cricket Association, Kat says she’s used to “thriving in a male-dominated environment”. This is lucky because within the first episode of the show, she’s accused of “talking too much”, on the receiving end of someone mansplaining how to do a jigsaw puzzle, and roundly criticised for her style and clothing.

To be fair, this all actually comes from one man: her partner in a challenge that lost her tribe immunity. Let’s just leave Kat alone and move on to him.

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Des

Des is described as “a classic Aussie bloke who loves to have a laugh” which I guess explains the delight he takes in open sexism and making everyone slightly uncomfortable.

While initially positioning himself as the loveable larrikin, Des quickly splinters off from the rest of the tribe. He doesn’t help building shelter instead opting to “let them make their own mistakes”. He ducks out after small talk to walk alone along the beach. Instead of sleeping with the rest of the group, he lays cold and defiant like a plank of driftwood right up against the shore.

Des’ lack of teamwork was then thrust into the spotlight in the immunity challenge where he and Kat were tasked with solving a puzzle. “Oi, all the corners have flowers in them,” he says, fists full of random wooden planks moments before the other teams finish. “I literally said this to you at the start and you ignored me,” she rightly replies.

As he gets back to camp (and the group starts casting blame before Tribal Council), Des revises his strategy of completely isolating himself from the rest of the voters.

Des gets to work on building an amazing shelter for the tribe and starts to treat everyone else like humans, but they’re all fairly curious as to why he didn’t do that before. When intently quizzed on this at Tribal Council, Des realises he’s going home and the Boomer Supremacy may indeed be over. He’s escorted from the island, head tilted back at the clouds, quietly muttering about Pokémon and lattes.

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Australian Survivor is on at 7.30pm Sundays and Mondays.