What is certain is that Survivor II was filmed in the Australian state of Queensland, touted in brochures as "beautiful one day, perfect the next."

This tropical paradise was turned, for purposes of Survivor II, into a strange and foreign land of rugged gorges and coursing waterways where even killer crocs swam and varous other types of Aussie nasties lived in the wild.

Producer Mark Burnett told National Geographic Adventure in its January/February 2001 issue that besides the hot Australian weather and pouring rain, the wildlife was formidable.

"Kangaroos and emus, packs of dingoes, crocodiles. Oh, and snakes, Australia has nine of the 10 deadliest snakes. It's almost like a safari. It's a good, majestic environment: inspiring but forbidding."

Much speculation

It’s a beautiful area, in fact, with deep ravines and waterfalls and all manner of exotic and potentially dangerous wildlife where indigenous Australians, many of whom were killed in the days of early inland colonisation by the white settlers, may have subsisted on wild berries and witchetty grubs and the occasional wallaby.

There had been much earlier speculation that Survivor II was being shot either in Kakadu or Arnhem Land -- both highly distinctive land areas with impenetrable bush and beautiful but deadly natural dangers -- in Australia’s Northern Territory.

As it was -- and logically so for purposes of control -- the filming location was later pinpointed to be within a privately-owned cattle station southwest of Cairns, farther south than Crystal Cascades and Lake Morris at the edge of Davies Creek National Park.

This cattle station has now been identified as Goshen along the Herbert River, with Tully Falls nearby. The site is 112 kilometres southwest of Cairns.

Tribal council vote

Survivor II contestants built their own shelter, caught their own food, and worked together as a team although in the end each one was a rival to be eliminated.

Contestants were voted out by a tribal council until only one -- the ultimate survivor -- remained.

Of the series filmed in Outback Australia, that one final million-dollar survivor was Tina Wesson, a 40-year-old mother of two and a nurse, of Tennessee.

Survivor in Australia > Page 1, 2