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On Wednesday night, Trent Felton, a 40-year-old former Navy chef from Tasmania, won the fourth season of Alone Australia after outlasting his last two challengers, Clint, a 57-year-old farmer from New Zealand, and Jasper, a 24-year-old permaculture teacher from WA.

Trent had survived in the wilderness of Sapmi, in northern Finland, for 52 days, setting a record for the number of fish caught in a single season, and bursting into tears (just as he’d predicted he would) when he received the surprise tap on his shoulder from wife Emma, who flew from the other end of the world to be the one to break the news that he’d seen off the nine others in the competition, and would be $250,000 richer for doing so.

Trent opens up to senior culture writer Karl Quinn about what he missed, what he learnt, and what he couldn’t wait to eat when he got home.

Well, Trent, let me start by saying congratulations and well done. How does it feel to have won such a tough and lonely endurance test?

Oh, mate, it’s just amazing. It was one of the best feelings of my life, something I’ll never forget, and to be honest, I’d love to do it all over again. It was an amazing adventure, better than I ever thought it would be. I was like a little boy out there again, Karl. Like I could just do what I wanted to do. You know, life at home is pretty hectic when you’ve got three young kids [Jack, 11, Stella, 9, and Leo, 6] and your own business [he works as a chef and as a landscaper], so it was a bloody good parenting break, to be honest.

Let’s talk about food. What was the first thing you ate when you got back?

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My wife cooked me a chicken parmy with chips, eggs, and some fresh bread, and that was so good. So good.

How much of your brain space out there is taken up with thoughts of food?

[Before I went to Sapmi] I was eating up to eight meals a day, trying to pack weight on, so by the time I got there I was sick of food. I’d been eating that many eggs I nearly didn’t want to go down to feed my chickens. But a couple of weeks in, my love for food started coming back. You start thinking about food, and then you literally start dreaming about food. It’s crazy. Every single night you’re laying in your sleeping bag – you’re in bed early because it was dark and if you stay up you’re just burning calories – and I’d just lay there, sometimes for four or five hours before I went to sleep, and you just can’t help but think about food.

Was the chicken parmigiana the thing you fantasised about most?

Not initially. I still remember the order: it was a homemade pizza, then it went to a chicken burger, and then it went to aeroplane food. I could hear aeroplanes in my area, and I kept thinking, “Just drop me out a meal”. I was desperate for anything with a bit of salt in it. But it was chicken parmy towards the end. It’s kind of inspired me to get that love for food back, and I’ve been writing a cookbook that’ll be ready in another month. It’s not Michelin-star kind of food, just food that people can make for their families, easy, nice food. No survival food – no boiled fish or jerky in this one.

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Speaking of which, you had enormous success with your smokehouse, which you used to preserve fish. But you had a lot less success with your efforts to build a fireplace inside your shelter. For a while there, as your home filled with smoke, it looked like you were going to turn yourself into jerky.

Yeah, that was crazy. I definitely didn’t prioritise fire before going onto the land, which was a rookie mistake. I did see on the US series a guy do a fire in his shelter like my first one, I did a bit of research on it, but I couldn’t find exactly how he did it, so it was a bit of a gamble out there. I was like, “She’ll be right, I’ll just cut a hole in the top of my shelter”. And then that didn’t work, so I cut a bigger hole, and I was like, “OK, now I’ve got to fix that”. But it was funny to watch.

How much stuff were you able to try out before you went?

I’d made gill nets and a fishing rod and lures and did a lot of research on clothing and food that I could eat over that side of the world. But I’m in Tassie, so you’re lucky to be able to cut down one tree, let alone go somewhere and cut down 50, so [making a shelter] was something that I thought, I’m just going to try it when I’m out there. Even the smoker – that’s the first smoker I’ve ever made. I was working until a week before we left, because obviously the bills still come in and you’re trying to get as much money as you can in the bank before you go away. I wasn’t really in a position to take a month or two off work and practice all these things. I was talking to a few of the other contestants the other night, and they were in the same kind of boat. So a lot of the stuff I did out there was first time, and some of it worked, and yeah, some of it definitely didn’t.

Well, the fishing worked remarkably well – you set a record haul (44 fish caught) for the Australian season, while some of your fellow contestants really struggled. What was the secret?

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I’ve trout-fished in Tassie my whole life, which probably does give me a bit of an advantage. A lot of the others fish, too, but normally saltwater, and they’re totally different kinds of fishing. My preparation going in was making lures that I thought might work; I’d sit there just making lure after lure after lure for hours and hours and hours, and then go and try them all and see which ones worked. I wasn’t allowed to take any lures with me, though. You’re allowed to take hooks and sinkers, but I had to make lures out of the things I took, or if I found feathers or anything like that. Watching it, it looks like it was easy, but sometimes I’d fish for hours and hours and hours without anything. I had to wind my reel in with my finger, and the eyes on my rod are icing up from the wet line coming back through them, some days my finger felt like it was just gonna fall off.

You did four years in the Navy. Did that experience help you in any way on Alone?

Unbeknownst to me before joining the Navy, I suffer from severe seasickness; I probably should have joined the army or the air force. There were so many times where I contemplated quitting because I was spewing between 12 and 18 times in a 24-hour period, and I was like, “Oh my god, I shouldn’t have done this.” But I suppose that’s the grit and resilience that I showed a little bit of on Alone. Like, I didn’t quit. I got through my four years and got out of there.

What in this experience are you most proud of?

Creating the whole thing, the whole experience. That if I die tomorrow, my kids can watch that forever, and they can show their kids. Until now, my kids haven’t really seen me achieve too much, because when they were born I stopped playing sport. I’ve been a proud dad of every single one of them multiple times, but there’s never really been a time where they could go, “Geez, I’m really proud of my dad for for doing that.” And they are so proud. That’s probably the best thing I’ve got out of this. And the money, obviously.

Would you do it again?

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I said to the producer [Riima Daher] the other day, “I don’t know where you’re going for the next one, but if anyone pulls out, ring me up and I’ll definitely go again”. If my family was all right with it, I’d go and do it again tomorrow, because the one thing I didn’t get out of this whole experience is that all the other participants were done, either mentally or physically, and I guess there’ll always be the question hanging over my head, how long could I go? I had enough food for 80 or 90 days, so that wouldn’t have been an issue. But would the other elements have taken me out? I’ll probably think about that forever.

Alone Australia is now streaming on SBS On Demand.

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