User blog comment:KLS2097/Australian Survivor: Hauraki Gulf Castaway Applications/@comment-26485526-20191019033549

Name (Age): Owen Bannatyne (28)

Occupation: Electrical Technician

Current Residence: Swan Hill, VIC

Bio: Owen grew up in Swan Hill, VIC, raised by a single father as his mother passed away from ovarian cancer when he was three-years-old. As such, Owen does not have much memory of his mother, aside from photos and whatever his father has said about her. As Owen was an only child, it was just him and his father in the house growing up. Over the years, Owen's father had been in a few relationships, but Owen never really ended up connecting with any of his father's girlfriends, nor did his father ever feel as though they quite measured up to the standard of Owen's birth mother, describing her as his one true love. Owen and his father are extremely close, and his motivation for going on Survivor is to win the money and give back to his father in any way he can in order to show his appreciation for all that his father had to sacrifice for him. Growing up, Owen remembers being picked on in school for not having a mother and focusing his attention on sports as a way to channel his energy away from how the bullies made him feel. In high school, Owen was a star rugby player, mostly used as a flanker. Though he was never interested in pursuing the sport professionally, his success in high school rugby garnered him a lot of positive attention, and helped him to feel truly accepted for the first time in his life, considering most of his team-mates to be like brothers to him and is still in touch with many of them to this day. Though Owen is generally pretty extroverted, his proverbial Achilles' heel socially is with women, especially in one-on-one conversation. Due to his father's many failed relationships after the passing of his mother, Owen tends to get really nervous when talking to women, fearful that he may say or do the wrong thing. Since high school, Owen has only had one serious relationship, with it coming to an end after five months.

Given his athleticism, Owen's main strategy during the game is to help his tribe physically in the challenges, hoping that will at least get him to the merge. He does hope to get into a core alliance with at least one or two friends he knows he can trust. Owen plans on playing a loyal game, but will not be afraid to stab someone in the back if he believes they are planning on doing the same to him in the near future. When it comes to the women, Owen hopes he can get away with talking to them no different than other guys, given that due to the nature of the game, romance is off the table for him, wanting to strictly focus on getting to the end and winning the money for himself and his father.