Encore: Gina Chick’s wild grandmother, and embracing her life as ’an element’

The inaugural winner of Alone Australia on her life as a creative, outrageous, nature-loving misfit who grew up to live through great depths of love and grief. Warning: Discusses the death of a child.

In 2023, Gina Chick spent 67 days by herself, in the wilderness of Tasmania’s West Coast, surviving on worms, fish, and one unlucky wallaby.

After those 67 days, Gina became the first-ever winner of a reality show on SBS called Alone Australia, but her approach to the competition was very different from the other contestants.

For Gina, the wild was not an enemy to be overcome but a place with no hierarchy, where she feels completely herself.

It’s always been that way, since she was a 'weird' little girl with a rare affinity with birds and nature.

As an adult, Gina spent years inside Sydney’s queer club scene and working for an all-girl security firm, but life changed completely for Gina when she became a mother herself.

Further information

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Gina's book We are the Stars was published by Simon & Schuster in 2024.

The Executive Producer of Conversations is Nicola Harrison.

This episode explores motherhood, parenting, reality television, Alone Australia, winner of Alone, hunting, survival, did Gina catch the wallaby? adoption, adoptees, Kiama, South Coast NSW, ADHD, birds, neurodiversity, bad boyfriends, debt, sexually transmitted debt, scent, pheromones, younger men, Oxford Street, survival, nightclubs, podium dancing, synaesthesia, breast cancer.

To binge even more great episodes of the 'Conversations podcast' with Richard Fidler and Sarah Kanowski go the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. There you’ll find hundreds of the best thought-provoking interviews with authors, writers, artists, politicians, singers, psychologists, musicians, and celebrities.