Winner of Alone Season 4 plans to donate some of their $250,000 prize to a competitor

"It was a feeling that I'll cherish for the rest of my life."

Alone Australia season four has reached its icy conclusion with one man left standing in Finland's frozen north: Trent Fenton.

The 40-year-old former Navy chef told SBS News in his first post-show interview that re-watching the moment his wife Em tapped him on the shoulder to reveal he had made it still gets him.

"I started even choking up a little bit, which was weird because I'm not that kind of guy normally," Fenton said.

"That's why people love Alone. It's just pure emotion."

Season four of the hit survivalist show took participants away from Oceania and into the wilds of Sápmi, deep within the Arctic Circle. Dropped along the shore of lake Rahajärvi, they had to battle sub-zero temperatures, extreme calorie deficits, and total isolation for a chance to win $250,000.

Father-of-three Fenton spent 52 days alone, outlasting nine other contenders — who either gave up or were deemed medically unable to continue — but said he is "no amazing survivalist".

Asked what he plans to do with the prize, he says he plans to donate part of it to causes championed by some of his competitors and pay down his mortgage.

The final episode of the season saw the other remaining finalists — 57-year-old farmer Clint and 24-year-old permaculture educator Jasper — pushed to their limits.

After spending a night spent throwing up, Clint called time on his 48th day in the wilderness, saying, "there are things in life worth more than money — like health, love, companionship, friends and family".

"When you haven’t got them, you realise just how important they are.”

Just a day later, Jasper was medically extracted after an infection in his hand was found to be spreading. He said he was leaving the show "a new person" after being challenged in the extreme.

"These 48 days have been some of the best of my life," Jasper said. "I’m proud of how far I pushed myself and feel at peace knowing I’ve done the experience justice."

Perspective the key to survival

As a child, Fenton said he would "get into a bit of strife", which prompted his father to relocate the family from Hobart to the Tasmanian Midlands where he could "get my nose clean".

"Mate, I've never looked back. I love everything about the bush and hunting and fishing," he said. "It was really my element out there."

The well-honed skills needed to sustain himself on whatever he could catch or forage were backed by a "bucketload of resilience", which Fenton said he developed in the Navy.

"I joined the Navy not knowing that I suffered severe seasickness," he said. "After four years throwing my guts up, I thought, 'If you can push through something like that, it puts you in good stead for most things that you're going to run into'."

Still, Fenton said he entered the competition with the mentality that it would be "the adventure of a lifetime" and that, even if he faced starvation, as many contestants do, he was always in the "privileged" position to be able to escape it — unlike many around the world, particularly those in Gaza.

All about the trout

The strategy which saw him take home $250,000 in prize money relied on bringing in as many fish as he could. While Finland was "a bit colder than good old Tassie", Fenton said as long as he had access to fish, he believed he would have a solid chance.

His commitment to fishing meant that, unusually for a contestant on Alone — which often sees people go for weeks without a solid meal — Fenton rarely struggled for food.

"One of the producers actually said to me, 'Trent, I've seen no one in the existence of Alone Australia put in as much time fishing or making stuff to fish as you did'," he said.

Reliance on fishing, however, meant that the day he lost a prized, handmade lure which had secured him over 30 fish was a real blow.

"I was devastated," he said. "If you watch the last episode ... I had a full dummy spit, and I threw my rod, and I was swearing."

"If someone said to me, 'Mate, you give me your car at home and I'll give that lure back to you', I would have done it in a heartbeat."

'Dark days' in the final stretch

Even with his well-stocked bag of dried fish, Fenton said not knowing whether his competitors also had food meant never quite feeling secure and constantly wondering if he had enough to outlast them.

The "dark days" came just before his seven-week-plus finish when the lake began to freeze but the ice wasn't thick enough to walk on.

"I couldn't spear fish ... I couldn't go and forage any berries or mushrooms ... what do I actually do?" Fenton said. "I just thought, 'I don't really want to be here, this is rubbish, I'm just bored, I can't do anything'."

Little did he know, he was just hours away from seeing his wife again, something that Fenton said was challenging to re-adjust to.

"I wasn't ready to go home. I hadn't mentally prepared or even started checking out for that," he said.

"A couple of days after getting taken off the land, some weird things go through your mind, and I struggled to come to terms with a lot of them."

Memories and money

Now that he's back in his regular life, Fenton said he plans to pay off the mortgage, invest money for his children to use later in life, and start "creating memories" with his family.

He also plans to donate some of his winnings to fellow competitor and ex-serviceman Dylan Hyatt-Jacobson, who opened up about his family's struggles with IVF treatment during his time on the show.

Ultramarathon runner Sia Kindberg, who tapped out in episode six due to frostbite, is raising money for survivors of slavery, human trafficking, and abuse with a Sydney to Melbourne run in October. Fenton said he will be donating to her cause as well.

Incredibly, after 52 days, the Alone Australia season four winner said he may not be done just yet — and is keen to find out exactly where his breaking point is.

"All the other competitors ... they could either see that they were medically unfit, or they were literally physically checked out; they know where their breaking point is. Whereas I kind of didn't experience that," Fenton said.

"Hopefully there's another time where there's another season of Alone with all the winners or something like that.

"That would be another amazing experience just to try and have another crack."

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