Canberra Times photographic editor Karleen Minney is used to being behind the camera. But now, as part of the upcoming reality show Million Dollar Island, she's spent a bit of time in front of one as well.
Minney, along with former Canberran Matt Apps, are set to appear in Channel Seven's latest social experiment where 100 everyday Australians stay on a remote island, all vying for the chance to win $1 million.
Hosted by Ant Middleton, Million Dollar Island sees each contestant start with a wristband worth $10,000. Contestants can then gain or lose wristbands by heading into the arena and competing in various challenges. They can also be given wristbands from other contestants.
"Ultimately, the person with the most bracelets wins the most money," Minney says.
"If you go into a challenge and you win, you win all the bracelets from the other people. If you go in the challenge and you lose, you lose your bracelet. At the next arena meeting, if you have no money on your wrist, you go home.
"But there's a social side of it. People who lose a bracelet can try and suss out who might be wanting to voluntarily leave. So people who make friends and have their finger on the pulse of what's going on, even though they're potentially cut out of the game, could save themselves at the 11th hour."
Of course, life on Million Dollar Island isn't an easy, breezy, tropical holiday.
Contestants are sleeping in the dirt, have little food, need to build their own fires and compete with the wildlife that is also on the island; there were wild boars, scorpions, snakes and even monkeys in trees who would often piddle on people walking underneath.
Weather-wise, the island - one of the 104 that make up the Langkawi archipelago off the mainland coast of western Malaysia - saw temperatures of 25 to 38 degrees, with humidity ranging from 70 per cent to 90 per cent, for the 32 days of filming.
Still, Minney says she enjoyed every minute of it. It probably helps she is a fan of reality shows - particularly ones with survival themes - and has even taken part in the fan-made YouTube series Survivor Canberra.
Even more so, it was the experience of going through all of it with people she would have never met otherwise.
"It's ridiculous the number of people that we met that we wouldn't have met any other way, and yet how close people became," she says.
"There is something about living through hardship and having common enemies and having great highs and great lows that bond you in a ridiculous way that is very hard to explain. And emotionally, you become very tied to these people.
"There were younger people, there were older people, there are people from all walks of life and all over the country. And because we're working so hard just to live, eat and breathe, we just became very close.
"That was the greatest takeaway of the game."
- Million Dollar Island premieres on Seven and 7plus on June 12.
