IT IS the world’s greatest game. You are pushed to your limits, fighting for the title of Sole Survivor.

As a contestant who experienced a solid 54 days on the island, I can say that Australian Survivor is as it appears on TV. But there are some things that you only realise once you’re behind-the-scenes.

YOU’RE ALLOWED SUNSCREEN AND INSECT REPELLENT

And THANK GOD for them. It’s hot, like really hot. Samatau swamp was also named accordingly — it was full of mosquitoes. Without sunscreen and repellent we would have all been ridiculously burnt and bitten like crazy. Even with the insect repellent we got eaten by mozzies — I can’t imagine life without it.

YOU DON’T NOTICE THE SMELL

Everyone always asks who smelled the worst. To be honest I don’t know, and others don’t either. It doesn’t take long for your nose to ignore what I assume is the horrid smell that is us. The truth is that we probably all smell equally bad — probably somewhat smoky seeing as we spent so much time hovering around a fire.

THE TORCHES ARE REALLY HEAVY

Maybe it’s because we were starving and had no energy, but walking with the tribal torches was exhausting, especially along sand. I was also bummed that we weren’t allowed to keep them because they looked great.

The seats at Tribal Council were also incredibly uncomfortable. You were perpetually nervous about going home and the awful seats just added to why Tribal Council was something to be feared.

RELATIONSHIPS RUN DEEPER THAN STRATEGY CHAT

When watching Survivor you often see strategy chat, but there is a lot of bonding between contestants that you don’t see. You learn about every contestant’s life in detail — their families, their lifestyle, their dreams and aspirations — and it makes the game a lot more real and a lot more difficult.

Everyone gets together to play games. We played snakes and ladders and even held a connect four tournament (drawing the boards in the sand). “Who am I?” was a frequent occurrence and, yes, mine was almost always Kesha.

IF THERE’S A TSUNAMI WARNING YOU HAVE 6-8 MINUTES TO EVACUATE

While it fortunately didn’t come to this, in the event of an emergency you need to evacuate incredibly quickly. I’d guess the walk out of Asaga beach was about 500m metres, up the beach and through a rainforest. If an emergency happened we would have had to move fast.

WE CAUGHT THE END OF A CYCLONE AND IT SHOOK US ALL

On night four, before our shelter was anywhere near complete, we got hit by freakish weather. At Samatau we spent all night trying to protect the fire by holding palm fronds around it while we got battered by torrential rain and strong winds.

YOU START TO DEVELOP A FEAR OF RAIN

Frequent rain. Ridiculous humidity. Nothing ever dries and it is the worst. We were almost always uncomfortably wet and when rain hit the idea of being drenched and having no real way to dry yourself was on every contestant’s mind. The effect the weather had on the mood of the camp was very noticeable.

CHALLENGES DID CAUSE INJURIES

It’s often glanced over. Challenges are every bit as dangerous as they look. Jacqui injured her shoulder and Kent injured his finger in challenges — not to mention the cuts, scratches and bruises that every contestant had their fair share of.

MEDEVAC IS A CONSTANT WORRY

I definitely wasn’t the only one that freaked out over the idea of a small cut leading to an infection that could get you pulled from the game. Many contestants had to go on antibiotics — including myself twice.

THE BUFFS ARE ACTUALLY SUPER USEFUL

They don’t just look pretty, even though mine was pink. Buffs were wrapped over your head at night to keep bugs away from your ears and mouth. They were also really warm. And if that wasn’t enough, you could use them to take the lid off the pot while cooking — well, when you were too lazy to find a stick, which I often was.