We've filmed so many wonderful people and places over the years, that we thought we'd explain a little about how some of these stories come to be!
In this instance, Mel had no reason to know if this man who had lived on a deserted island for the past 20 years was going to stay true to his word and come and pick us up in his boat - but thought the story was worth the try!
Link to Restoration Island segment: https://youtu.be/sYhRFAH2DRo
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Transcript:
So there are quite a few 4 wheel driving shows out there and as a producer of a 4 wheel drive show it can be quite challenging to kind of find places that people haven't seen on screen a million times before. So sometimes I get the Hema map and literally start scanning for places that I haven't heard of before. One time I was doing that in the Cape York area and I stumbled across an island called Restoration Island. I googled it to see what what came up and there were a couple of articles on a guy named Dave who had up and moved to the island 20 years ago. Pretty much had lost everything in a stock exchange crash and just up and left everything and went and lived on a desert island. So I instantly thought well here’s an interesting story and I really somehow want to try to include it. So my next challenge was how do I contact this man who lives on this deserted island. I thought Okay well he's going to need some sort of supplies and I'm assuming that he would get them from Lockhart River. So I just started calling around places in the town and I think I called the general store who said that they did know Dave and they were happy to take a message for him and next time he came in he would call me back which is what happened. And he was more than happy to be filmed. We turned up to the pick up point and then just waited and he was a little bit late but finally turned up in a little tinny and we thought Oh goodness, how are we all going to fit in the tinny… but it's quite funny because travelling with Roothy you get used to people just not noticing you and not really caring about you. If Roothy’s there they just want to speak to Roothy. But in this instance Dave could not have given a shit about Roothy or Glen or anyone else there because being female he was quite excited to see me. As he admitted to us he gets very lonely on the island and I think within a few minutes had offered that I could move in with him if I wanted which I declined. Plus Gav didn't approve so what can you do. John did the interview with Dave and he gave us some fantastic content. We got the overlay that we needed and some beautiful drone shots. Thankfully the weather was in our favour. Dave is one of those people that I'll never forget it. It was such an incredible story and I was really happy with how the segment turned out.