For Tom Warriner and Matt Nunn, tragedy strikes in the form of a bright orange shirt.\u00a0 More accurately, an industrial sewing machine and pieces of orange cloth that had to be sewn into a shirt.\u00a0 It was a great task to throw in amongst the challenges with so many heavy-lifting endurance feats that clearly favoured blokes rather than women.\u00a0 It’s one of the very few occasions where girls had a natural advantage (even if they had never used a sewing machine before).\u00a0 But what a pity the organisers of the race thought it a good idea to schedule this very specific fine-motor skills task right at the end of the lap, when it was impossible to make up any time lost.\u00a0 Maybe it was deliberately done to knock out one of the male teams and ensure women stayed in the competition?\u00a0 Until last night, it looked certain that it would be two all-male teams fighting for the final prize.<\/p>\n
Last night’s episode was also a reminder that in this sort of competition (in which being unscrupulous on the quiet can help you win, as distinct from being upfront tricky – which will simply encourage other contestants to conspire to get rid of you asap), being desperate is an advantage.\u00a0 Tom and Matt just didn’t possess the desperation that the remaining teams do.\u00a0 The surfers desperately want to win the cash, the girls desperately want to prove that girls can do as well or better than boys, and the father\/son team are\u00a0determined to prove their relationship is mended after a long time apart.\u00a0 Tom and Matt weren’t desperate for anything other than to do the best they could and go places they had never been.\u00a0 At times they chose tasks that were more interesting\/unrepeatable (eg dressing up in a suit of armor) rather than tasks which probably would have been finished quicker.<\/p>\n
As Matt Nunn said, he can build a cattle yard worth $50,000 but he couldn’t sew together a shirt worth less than $5.\u00a0 Blokes working on the land will have the thickest, muscliest hands you’ll see anywhere – precisely the sort of hands that find sewing a virtual impossibility, but find fencing,\u00a0mechanical and heavy stockwork etc a breeze.\u00a0 The organisers of ‘Amazing Race’ may or may not have realised it at the time, but if they wanted to get rid of rural contestants, they could not have picked a more certain way of eliminating them.\u00a0 Personally I think producers of the show didn’t find the bushies to be flamboyant enough – they were too quiet, steady and no-nonsense; until more recent episodes, there was relatively little film footage of them in comparison with some of the other teams.\u00a0 So it would have suited the film producers to see them disqualified in last night’s episode.<\/p>\n
Given the clear natural advantage that blokes have had in Amazing Race Australia, because first and foremost it has been incredibly physically demanding, on fitness merit it’s obvious that the girls deserve to win.\u00a0 Although their self-promotional crowing has already been a bit hard to love as is the eye-fluttering lowcut singlet-wearing ‘I’m a pretty blonde who needs a big strong bloke to help me’ stance that is trotted out whenever it suits them.<\/p>\n
Matt Nunn and Tom Warriner can be really proud of their efforts – no tanties despite whatever pressure they were under – dignified, polite, capable and great ambassadors for rural Australia.\u00a0 Matt and Tom did deserve to be in the final, given they’ve acted more independently than the other 3 teams\u00a0remaining.<\/p>\n
Interesting to read the forum comments on the Amazing Race Australia discussion on TV tonight.<\/a>\u00a0 Most of the comments are from people disappointed that Matt Nunn\u00a0and Tom Warriner have been eliminated from Amazing Race Australia.\u00a0 The Matt & Tom – Amazing Race Australia Facebook<\/a> page has scores of messages from people disappointed that they are not in the final of the show.<\/p>\n Applications are now open for contestants\u00a0to\u00a0compete in\u00a0the\u00a0second season\u00a0of Amazing Race Australia (2012), and I really hope we see a couple of people from the bush competing again (I for one would not be watching, otherwise).<\/p>\n Meanwhile Matt Nunn\u00a0is back working in the bush,\u00a0in western Queensland. \u00a0Tom Warriner was apparently working on\u00a0Argyle Downs, SE of Kununurra on the WA\/NT border,\u00a0before Amazing Race Australia filming commenced.\u00a0 Tom’s father Ken Warriner\u00a0is part owner,\u00a0CEO and Chairman of Consolidated Pastoral Company and several of his brothers also work for CPC.\u00a0\u00a0Tom has now moved from the bush to the Gold Coast, where he is completing a Bachelor of Business at Bond University, and working as a labourer in his spare time\u00a0for fellow Amazing Race Australia contestant Luke Downes, in his\u00a0landscaping business.<\/p>\n To locate extra information regarding\u00a0Matt Nunn\u00a0and Tom Warriner and Amazing Race Australia, type ‘Amazing Race’ into\u00a0the blog search facility on the right hand side of the page (about halfway down).\u00a0 To see photos of bushies at work on Australia’s largest cattle stations, including friends and relatives of Matt and Tom, see the unique coffee-table style\u00a0books ‘A Million Acre Masterpiece’ & ‘Life as an Australian Horseman’.<\/a>\u00a0 Read testimonials here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For Tom Warriner and Matt Nunn, tragedy strikes in the form of a bright orange shirt.\u00a0 More accurately, an industrial sewing machine and pieces of orange cloth that had to be sewn into a shirt.\u00a0 It was a great task to throw in amongst the challenges with so many heavy-lifting endurance feats that clearly favoured […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11,217],"tags":[179,218],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1711"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1711"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1711\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1715,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1711\/revisions\/1715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}