We Chatted With The Winner of Alone Australia Season 2

Interview with Krzysztof, Winner of Alone Australia Season 2

TA: So how does it feel, watching the series back?

KW: It’s a little bit surreal, but it’s a lot easier to watch when you’ve got a nice, big, juicy pizza in front of you. But it was good to watch everyone’s journey and see how everyone approached problems differently.

And how did it feel, that moment when you realised that you’d won?

I still haven’t realised. I was treating it like a big, fun camping trip, and winning wasn’t something that I thought of.

 

 

I was interested in that, you were positive and never really talked about the money. But towards the end you were looking pretty grim. What was keeping you going if it wasn’t money or the idea of winning.

The fact that I was in a (probably) once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that I’ll never get to do again. I was like I’m going to milk every last drop out of this, I’m gonna enjoy every last bit of this view, and every last bit of camping under this shelter. Unfortunately the lack of sleep was really getting to me at the end.

Why did you want to go on Alone in the first place?

I wanted a holiday. I’d been working six-day weeks the previous two years, Erin my partner saw the show so we watched it, and I was being your typical armchair critique yelling ‘No way, don’t do it like that!’, so she said, ‘Why don’t you apply?’.

So you got a break from aquaculture where you got to go and try and fish?

[laughs] Yeah basically.

What was the biggest challenge out there?

The elusive fish. I tried so many different things. You saw the boats that I made, I was bottom bashing, I made a fly rod at one point and a couple of different flies. It was just eels, lots and lots of eels.

How tempting was it to break the rules and eat an eel?

So tempting. I’m not a big fan of eels because I work with them, but out there I would’ve happily eaten an eel, a pigeon in a tree, anything that would walk through my camp, I was craving chicken nuggets, if I could grab a bird and convert it into chicken nuggets and stick it on a spit I would’ve done that.

My partner will love that, she reckons everyone should be given chicken nuggets when they get on the boat.

Tell me about the shelter, you brought tools to build, you set to work on it right away. Why was that so important to you?

For me it was something to do, something to occupy my mind and hyperfocus on something so I don’t go into a negative mindset. I built the shelter over a long period of time. I did the tarp, then the back wall, then one of the side walls, another side wall, then I upgraded my bed, built the front walls, and then I built the roof.

 

 

I’ve never actually built a shelter like this before, I’ve read about them. You can see as I go that the construction is getting better and better. It was effective too, it was well-insulated and toasty warm inside. I had it facing toward the beach so in the evenings as the cool air would come down [the mountains] it wouldn’t go into my shelter, it’d go around it.

What skills do you reckon you relied on the most? You talked about neurodivergence as a superpower, but a lot of people have talked about your positivity. Was that something you’ve always had or that you’ve worked on?

I don’t think it’s really a skill, it’s just who I am. You know, look at the bright side of life and see the positive in everything.

I love that, even when it got really hard toward the end you weren’t being negative, you were just not saying much at all.

Even then, just sitting on the beach with the sun on your face, the sound of the water, occasionally opening my eyes and seeing two sets of mountains, two sets of trees on the bank, two sets of everything, it was nice. Who can say they’ve had an experience like that?

[laughs] I think it’s widely agreed that you had the best view.

It was pretty good. I’ve taken a little screencap from the TV of that view and I’m going to do a Bob Ross painting with my partner.

 

 

Want more? Read all of our Alone Australia coverage and recaps and tune in next Wednesday to the We Are Explorers Podcast to hear the complete interview where we dig into bed construction, the edit, Krzysztof’s favourite piece of gear and how the experience changed him.

Listen Now: We Chatted With The Winner of Alone Australia Season 2 – We Are Explorers Podcast Season 3 Ep 4