Interviewing someone is supposed to be a process of uncovering what makes a person different to (and more special than) you. But with Outback Mike (aka Mike Atkinson), the interview begins with discovering how similar we are, at least in our backgrounds. He’s only a year older than me, and also grew up in suburban Canberra’s mighty Weston Creek, with us both attending local government schools. We even had brief modelling interludes, my role in a 1980s Thai TV commercial (sporting a pink beret and lots of blue eye shadow) matching his fleeting appearances in Canberra ads and fashion parades. But, aside from being married with kids, that’s where the similarities end.
The differences between Mike and I (and just about everyone else on Earth) are contained in the following life summary. He was a defence force pilot for fifteen years, doing everything from helicopter peace-keeping missions to breaking the sound barrier in fighter jets. Mike is a survival expert who has lived off the land for months at a time, with skills learnt directly from Indigenous folk across Australia. He’s also a filmmaker—Surviving the Outback was his award-winning first film, selected for the Banff Film Festival—and he’s partway through making his first feature. (He is cameraman, writer, director, producer, on-screen talent and everything else.) And he’s also an adventurer, one who has skied solo across Iceland, trained camels in Saudi Arabia and headed off across the Dannah Sands. Mike’s latest expeditions have been solo trips escaping historical survival scenarios: Sailing an improvised raft up the Kimberley coast then trekking out; and a 1,500km trip up the Great Barrier Reef in a home-made dugout canoe.
I suspect Mike will soon be a big name in the TV/adventure field too. He finished his Great Barrier Reef trip in August 2021. When we
