Alone Australia Season 3 review: once more unto the breach

Alone Australia is back in the wilds of Western Tasmania, and when a contestant early in the first episode says ‘there’s just a whole lot of fuck-all out there,’ you know he’s not kidding.

A burgeoning yearly tradition, now in its third season, Alone Australia – SBS’s local edition of the global Alone franchise – has built a reputation for being as much about the characters as it is about their survival skills.

Seasoned viewers already have a sharp eye for weakness: talking early on about family can be fatal in a show where the winner spends on average two months without human contact.

Each of the ten contestants is dropped off in a stretch of wilderness – this season they spent winter in the West Coast Ranges of Tasmania around Lake Burbury – with the aim of staying out there on their own as long as possible. Shelter, food, water, warmth, it’s all up to them.

Watch the Alone Australia Season 3 trailer.

They’re only allowed to take ten items with them; they can ‘tap out’ using a satellite phone if they’ve had enough, and failing a medical test will also see them heading home. Last one standing wins $250,000; overseas editions have run three months or more, while the previous two Australian editions both had winners just shy of 70 days.

Being alone also means being your own cameraperson. Each contestant has their own camera, which provides us with the show we’re watching and them with the closest thing they’ll have to human contact.

Alone Australia Season 3: meet the contestants

It’s one of the show’s big strengths that their constant talking to camera comes across as an instantly genuine need for connection (or just to explain their survival schemes); the not-so-invisible hand of the reality show editor is still there, but the cast seem far more authentic than the usual types.

Queensland Disability Services Officer Ceilidh is deaf and hoping to use the prize money to set up a Tasmanian home with her wife. Broome native and Yanyuwa, Waanyi/Garawa man, former NRL player Matt is a skilled hunter – though seeing him trying to club a cute mouse to death for food is a reminder that hunger knows few bounds.

Ben, an English teacher with a strong Christian faith, is confident that God has his back. Corrine runs a successful bush food business based on foraging (it’s not hard to see the commercial benefits a win would bring), but is yet to take an animal’s life for food. Or any other reason, come to think of it.

At 63, Muzza is the oldest contestant in Alone Australia history,and has a touch of the Dave Hughes about him; he’s also not a big fan of hippies, so it’s possibly a good thing he’s not near the contestant licking lichen. One of the big divides this season is between the hunters and the foragers, and when Muzza goes digging up worms they’re for bait, not for eating. Or at least, not yet they’re not.

One of the things Alone does best is present its contestants with a dilemma they can’t wriggle out of: how far will you go to stay alive? The previous series of Alone was filmed in New Zealand, where hunting restrictions meant the focus was much more on husbanding what food you could find.

Here hunting is back on the menu (obviously some animals are off the list), and one of the big divisions early on lies between those whose survival skills are focused on foraging, and those out there setting traps and looking for prey.

Complicating things, this season also has a strong mix of idealists and pragmatists, those who have firm ideals and beliefs around nature and those who believe that their personal survival is the highest goal. Initially, it’s tempting to side with those focused merely on food and shelter.

Talking about emotional connections and personal beliefs can seem like a waste of energy when what counts is finding your next meal.

But Alone is as much a game of psychological endurance as it is physical survival: having something to believe in and work towards can be just as important as knowing which mushrooms are safe to eat (the only sensible answer there is none of them).

As the opening montage makes clear, even for those who make a good start the real test is yet to come. The west coast of Tasmania underwent some pretty savage rainfall during the filming period, and with just about everyone camping on the banks of a lake, rising water is going to be a real threat in the weeks to come.

Whatever skills and equipment the contestants may have brought with them, nature always has the upper hand.

That said, two contestants in the very first episode are delighted to find empty bottles near their camp (they’re allowed to use any items they might find); seems even the wilds of Tasmania are no longer untouched by the trash-dumping hand of humanity. At least if they go home early they’ll still make a 10-cent profit.

Alone Australia Season 3 starts with a double episode on SBS on 26 March, with episodes airing weekly after that. All episodes will be available on SBS on Demand.