Who Is Mike Hayes from Alone Australia Season 2? What Happened

Spoiler note: this covers Mike Hayes's run on Alone Australia season 2.

Mike Hayes was 60 when he competed on Alone Australia season 2, filmed in Fiordland on New Zealand's South Island, and per his contestant page he was the oldest contestant in that cast. He's from Barrengarry, New South Wales, and works as a resilience coach, running Wilderness Experience Training, a business that puts athletes, sporting teams, and corporate groups through outdoor mental-toughness programs. He's also a former rugby player and coach, and a longtime deer hunter who has spent decades taking deliberate stretches of time off-grid to live self-sufficiently.

On paper, that's one of the more qualified profiles in Alone Australia's history; three decades of self-directed wilderness time is more sustained exposure than most contestants bring. His run didn't reflect that preparation. Hayes was medically evacuated after just 2 days, the shortest stay of anyone covered in this batch, with the cause listed as chest pain, a serious enough symptom that production pulled him almost immediately rather than let him continue.

It's worth being direct about this: a 2-day exit for chest pain isn't a reflection of skill or preparation. Cardiac symptoms in a 60-year-old contestant, in a remote location with limited immediate medical access, is exactly the kind of risk Alone's medical team is built to catch fast, and by that measure the system worked as intended.

Our data doesn't have a recorded gear list for Hayes's run, which is expected given how brief his time on location was and how gear documentation for Alone Australia in general trails the US series.

What he's done since

Hayes's post-show public profile centers on the same resilience-coaching work he was already doing before casting. He continues running Wilderness Experience Training, leading outdoor programs aimed at building mental toughness in athletes and corporate clients, and remains connected to the rugby and coaching communities in his region. He's a father of three adult children and, by most accounts, has kept living in the regional coastal area he called home before the show.

Given how brief his on-camera run was, Hayes hasn't generated the volume of post-show coverage that longer-lasting contestants like his season 2 castmates have; the show simply didn't give him much screen time to build a following from.

Where he fits in season 2

A 2-day run placed Hayes last in the season 2 field, the shortest stay of the whole cast. Winner Krzysztof Wojtkowski completed the season without tapping out at 64 days, and runner-up Suzan Muir lasted 63 days before leaving, later revealing at the reunion that heart issues were part of what pushed her to stop, a detail that echoes Hayes's own chest pain evacuation days earlier. Third-place Andreas Lundin lost 30 percent of his starting body weight over 57 days before deciding not to risk his health further. Against that backdrop, Hayes's near-immediate medical exit reads less like a fluke and more like an early instance of the same physical risks that eventually caught up with several of his longer-lasting castmates.

For how the rest of that cast fared, including the eventual winner, the season 2 page has full standings. If you want to see how age and prior wilderness experience have played out for other contestants across the franchise, our alone-rules page covers the show's medical-evacuation criteria and casting process in more detail.