Growing up in Blaxland, 2013 Big Brother winner Tim Dormer was always surrounded by a menagerie of animals.
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“I think I’ve owned every single pet there is. I even had a pig at one stage!” he said.
So when animal welfare charity LOTL (Life On The Line) Rescue invited the 29-year-old to meet some of their exotic residents last week he leapt at the chance. The former Wycliffe Christian School student spent Thursday afternoon getting up close and personal with animals rescued or retired from zoos, the circus and entertainment industry at the Wallacia-based charity.
“I’m very passionate about conservation and looking after the environment and caring about animals. It was a dream to meet those animals up close,” he said.
Dormer said he was happy to use his newfound fame to draw attention to a cause he feels strongly about.
“I’m really passionate about not just being a reality TV star that rocks up to any red carpet for the next few months. I’d like to turn my career into being a role model or spokesperson for certain things — if it’s about bringing awareness to the environment, that’s definitely something I’m very passionate about,” he said.
That passion is a direct result of Dormer’s childhood in the Blue Mountains where experiences like seeing kangaroos at Euroka Clearing in Glenbrook were commonplace.
With his parents plus three of his sisters still living in the Mountains, discovering that bushfires had destroyed more than 200 homes in the area was an emotional blow for the television star after three months of seclusion in the Big Brother house.
“It was just awful,” he said. “That was one of the most moving things — coming out and realising that people had lost everything and I’d just sort of been given everything. It put everything into perspective about what really matters in life. Family friends [of ours] lost everything in the fires.”
Dormer auctioned his jacket from the Big Brother house for the bushfire appeal, with the winning bid topping $70,000.
Other outcomes from his Big Brother experience house were much happier. Seeing his dad Phil — a teacher at Blue Mountains Grammar School — get caught up in the hoopla of the television show was something he didn’t expect.
“I think he’s loving all the attention that he gets now, he gets recognised at the local shops and things like that,” joked Dormer.
Now a Sydney resident, Dormer’s post-Big Brother life is likely to be very different. Although he would like to find time to complete his Bachelor of Science degree at Macquarie University, new media opportunities are beckoning. But whatever he does next, his Blue Mountains connections will never be far away.
“Whenever we have friends visiting I always take them out west to the Blue Mountains and show them my home town. I’ll always be a Mountains boy,” he said.
