We’re not big reality TV viewers but were initially tempted to take a look at “Outback Jack”, (yup, I know, its taken a while to make it to Dutch television) by the landscape which we recognised from our last month in Australia together. We spent this month travelling around the Kimberley in North-western Australia and the show appears to be filmed in and around El Questro and the Kunnunara region. We camped at El Questro too, but in the el-cheapo BYO-tent-and-get-eaten-by-a-crocodile area, whereas the programme seems to be making use of the luxury top-end options available there.

We were quickly seduced by the irony of sending 12 American city-living model/actress wannabes to El Questro to meet one Australian city-boy model/actor wannabe. Surely they’d have all felt more at home over a diet-frappe on Chapel St in Vadim’s home town of Melbourne?

The concept is brilliant though. The problem with the ‘Bachelor’ idea is that it doesn’t appeal as much to a male audience as to women. Solution: put eight models in bikins and have them splash around a billabong trying to catch fish and Bobs-your-uncle! Programming for the WHOLE family!

We love the supposedly adventurous challenges and even more the not-so-subtle-soft-porn filming of these challenges. Does the director actually yell “CUT! Marissa can you catch that fish again but this time with MORE booty!”. Is there an X-rated version where the girls catch fish with their cleavage? And we have a lot of sympathy for Vadim whose responses-for-every-situation are beginning to dry up. The poor boy is starting to sound a bit repetitive. Can’t the scriptwriters come up with anything better than the same old, ..”this journey that we’ve started together…”, …”I’ve only just started to discover who you really are…”, “..you’re a beautiful person on the inside…”. It’s obvious everyone involved had a hoot filming this show.

Last night however I was jarred from my open-jawed-admiration when one of the contestants mentioned that she had been told that “Australian men like to be waited on” or words to that effect. It was not so much the novelty of this idea, it has about as much to do with reality as the rest of the programme, but my (Dutch) husband’s reaction. He seemed to be having trouble breathing and had sunk into his chair groaning, gasping, turning purple and making strange squeaking noises. After some considerable time of hopelessly- over-acted-amusement he summonned just enough breath to wheeze, “well obviously not by Australian women, or they’ll be waiting a long time!”

Frostily, this-Australian-woman pointed out, that my mother, has made a huge fuss over him when she’s been here. Spoilt him even. some would say.