“I was a free-range kid, we went out snorkelling, swam in rivers and creeks and at beaches, climbed trees, roamed around in cyclones, ate coconuts and mangoes,” she says. “It was a fabulous tropical childhood and in some ways coming here to be on Survivor is like reliving that.” By the age of 17, she was an Olympic champion. At one stage, she held every world freestyle swimming record from 100 metres to 1,500 metres simultaneously. She was a golden-haired girl with a big smile, and then, at the moment she might have been set to cash in, she quit. Shane Gould in Fiji for Australian Survivor season 3. Credit:Nigel Wright By 18, she had found God, gotten married and was living the alternative lifestyle on a farm in Margaret River. “For a lot of people, that was off the planet,” she says. “People didn’t understand the alternative lifestyle movement, and I couldn’t explain.

“My husband and I were very idealistic. We thought we could save the world by learning how to live without mod cons. We had people living with us, in our home and on our property, it was a mini-community.” At 25, she’d had two kids, but she felt “superbly physically fit. If I’d done a year’s training I probably could have got on the Australian team, but I was busy making babies and milking cows and growing tomatoes and hosting street people in the mud-brick house I’d built. I had another project, another life, another interest to throw my energies into.” Shane Gould in May 1975, aged 18 and already retired and married. Credit:John Patrick O'Gready More recently, she’s focused her energies on a PhD on the significance of swimming in the Australian cultural landscape. The offer to do Survivor came up just as she was finishing her thesis; filming would happen while her supervisors were reading it and offering feedback; when she gets back, she can finish the thesis before finally submitting it and, hopefully, becoming Dr Gould. It comes as no surprise to learn she hopes to return from the show as champion; much has changed over the years, but the competitive urge never deserted her.

She doesn’t get paid for being on the show – though she says she is “compensated” for having to hire people to fill in while she’s away (she and her husband own a small holiday retreat in Tasmania) – but there is a $500,000 cash prize up for grabs. And Gould knows exactly how she will spend it if she makes it to the end. “I’d like to build my dream sustainable cottage,” she says. “And I’d like to put some money aside for my grandchildren’s tertiary education.” She’s looking forward to the down-and-dirty aspects of life on the island, “really having to forage and survive, and to the tribal part of it, getting to know strangers and how we can work together to advance through the stages”. With her Olympic medals in 1975. Credit:John Patrick O'Gready And while she doesn’t crave the spotlight, and took some convincing to throw her hat into the ring, she’s also looking forward to having an opportunity to tackle the scourge of ageism.