Recently celebrating their 10-year friendiversary, Morgan and Lilli decided to do something a bit crazy and applied for the race. Almost immediately the duo were surprised at how much more difficult the race was than they first expected.
“It was very challenging,” Lilli told 10 play, “the lack of sleep, the intensity of getting lost and having to run 100 kilometres a day really taxes the body.”
“But apart from that, it was so much fun,” Morgan added, laughing.
“I was surprised with how bad we were with directions and navigating, I thought we’d be better at that,” Lilli added.
Like most of us, the pair were so used to using their phones for directions, that having to use maps was a new, slightly confusing experience.
“I had it upside down most of the time,” Lilli said.
“Who gives lessons on which way to hold a map?” Morgan agreed.
Though maps weren’t their greatest ally in the race, the pair had begun to feel a lot more confident in their standings.
“The two previous [legs] we got fourth and fifth and we were at the back of the pack the rest of the race,” Morgan said. “We were like okay, we got some momentum!”
“We were so confident at that point, then it all went to sh*t,” Lilli said.
During a challenge where Lilli had to drive a speedboat (that looked like a racing car) around a course and perform one figure eight and two doughnuts, she kept performing too many doughnuts, forcing her to the back of the queue and to restart the challenge.
“I literally couldn’t count a loop,” she said, “like, where does a loop start and finish first of all? I thought I was doing so well because I was going so fast, I was like, I’m nailing this!
“You're just going around, trying to count while you’re in a boat and you can’t really see through the windscreen, so I was just guessing,” she continued. “[I was] looking pretty much at Morgan on the stand, trying to use her as my point but I just got so confused. It was the simplest challenge.”
Seeing all the other teams come through the challenge, complete it and leave, Morgan and Lilli were left behind with just one other team. With the pressure well and truly on, they had to do everything they could to make sure they weren’t the last team on the Pit Stop mat.
“I think at first we still had hope,” Morgan said. “After that, I remember eating stuck in traffic and we just got lost in the town.”
“That was probably the most lost we’ve been the whole race,” Lilli added. “We had no one to help or guide us, no flags. It was just like nothing apart from stray dogs.”
“And icing sugar,” Morgan added.
Landing on the Pit Stop mat after a tense footrace to the finish, a dejected Morgan admitted that the duo weren’t surprised at all but they had hoped they were facing a non-elimination round, especially seeing how well they had been doing in the recent legs of the race.
“It was nice to just go on there and have fun and not have to stress about it,” Morgan said. “We decided — after our first leg — we were stressing so much it was making us do worse. We decided to have fun with it and it worked in our favour… Until it didn’t.”
“Also, after the first leg I instantly knew, I was like Morgs, we’re probably not going to win this,” Lilli added, laughing.
“We had such high hopes!” Morgan said.
“We were like, ‘Yeah we’re going to win, we’re taking home $250,000!’” Lilli said, adding, “Literally after the first leg I was like… nup.”
“It was like wow, this is so hard. Who invented this?!” Morgan added as the pair laughed again.
The Amazing Race Australia airs Sunday - Tuesday at 7.30 on Network 10 and 10 play
