TV presenters are also performing, they rarely get to be unashamedly themselves. There’s a level of assumed intimacy with Gina the human that’s a little disconcerting.Īctors run into the phenomenon of people falling in love with the character they play, and projecting that onto them. Like I just nipped out to get some milk for the next cuppa, and now we’re taking our fingers off the pause button and getting down to business. The bit that’s surprising is that they wander up and launch straight into a conversation they’ve obviously already been having with me in their heads. That was to be expected after the whole cavewoman-tearing-a-carcass-apart-with-her-teeth thing. The strange thing isn’t that people stop me to chat about the show. We’re now more than halfway through the series and more than a million people have watched the first four episodes, and that number is climbing steadily. How many people will actually watch this thing?

The boring, everyday things, like putting fuel in the car. Before the show aired, one of the producers told us to go out and do the things we liked to do, while people still didn’t know who we were. In the promos I tore the head off a fish, licked the bare skin of a defenceless denuded stringybark and gnawed a strip of sinew from the ribcage of something raw and bloody. I’ve also wailed next to a fire grieving my lost daughter, nearly peed myself laughing, trying to rock my strategically fattened frame upright, danced barefoot in moss like a banshee hippy, and asked trees if they wanted to be part of my shelter like they can hear me. The infamous Alone “blur” has yet to be deployed, but who knows, it may be coming. So far, viewers have gotten up close and personal with a horrendous hive-rash on my 52-year-old thighs, had a narrow brush with bush (thankfully averted), and been way too close while I chundered on national television.

My hitherto well-defended anonymity well and truly fled the building, tail between its legs after I bared all (almost literally) on SBS’s breakout survival show, Alone Australia.

Gina Chick was pushed past the limit on Alone Australia.

The rock chick series