User blog comment:KLS2097/Australian Survivor: Hauraki Gulf Castaway Applications/@comment-33641024-20191025201427

Name (Age): Mark Billington (33)

Occupation: Psychologist

Current Residence: Melbourne, VIC

Bio: Mark was born in England to an Jamaican mother and an Australian father shortly after his parents got married and his father became a Jehovah's Witness, but moved to Australia as a child  - first to Adelaide and then to his father's hometown of Mount Gambier. For the first 16 years of his life, he lived a very religious, sheltered and controlled life with his ever-growing family which conformed to his parent's expectations of him. But he knew he was different from a young age and by the time he was 16, he figured out that he was gay - which spelled big trouble for him. For the next year and a half, he loathed himself and alternated between self-harm and trying to reach out confidentially to whatever resources he could. Right before he graduated high school, he was caught kissing a boy in the park by his father who beat him, disowned him and kicked him out of the house immediately thereafter, forbidding him from ever contacting the family again. After couch-surfing for 3 months until he graduated high school, he immediately hitchhiked from Mount Gambier to Melbourne with just the clothes on his back, a small backpack and $100 and never looked back. He worked for two years at a local Maccas to save some money for rent and eventually uni, working his way up to become a manager. He received a partial scholarship at Deakin University and studied to become a social worker, before a professor recommended him to a colleague for a full scholarship at the University of Melbourne in medicine, where he chose to study psychology because he wanted to work with kids in a similar situation to where he was an pay it forward. Now he has both a thriving private practice working with adolescents as well as working pro-bono with the Victoria Department for Child Protection on cases with abused children. He currently lives with his partner Dean and their two dogs, Duke and Lucky and is actually postponing his wedding if he goes on SURVIVOR. Mark hopes that the SURVIVOR experience will help him grow as a person and prove to himself that he is truly a survivor in every respect.

Mark has been a fan of Survivor ever since he started watching it for his psychology classes and the player he'd like to emulate the most in his own game would be Denise Stapley. His ideal game would be to use his social bonds to try and keep a pulse on the mood of the tribe and to understand why his competitors will make the moves they make in order to ride their moves to his benefit and make it to the end. He also plans on using those skills to keep on relatively good terms with everyone on the tribe in order to "make them like me even as I'm voting them out". But make no mistake: Mark is no pushover and he did not make it this far in life by being soft. If someone ever crosses him, he knows how to turn on his ruthless side and make sure that they're voted off as quickly as possible. He's also on the lookout for any superfans, viewing them warily as potential threats but also as a good shield to stand behind in an alliance. He wants his game to be seen as cerebral, thoughful and decent and he'll think through every move to put himself in the best position to win the jury vote.