It took two seasons of the popular television show, but in her return to The Bachelor in Paradise, Brazilian Mary Viturino finally met the love of her life and soon-to-be husband.
"We are going to get married and have children," she says.
The 33-year-old Brazilian lawyer was living in Warracknabel in regional Victoria when she decided to respond to a casting call for The Bachelor. She had already split up with her former boyfriend and was living with her six-year-old daughter.
"I decided to stay in Warracknabel; I had my friends, my job there. After a while, I was looking for a boyfriend using these dating apps when the call for The Bachelor came up in 2019."
"I've always been a super fan of the program and applied to be part of the show. I was chosen from 3,000 girls and couldn't believe it," recalls Ms Viturino.
But she couldn't win the heart of the 2019 season's bachelor, astrophysicist Matt Agnew.
"[Matt Agnew] was not interested in a woman with my personality," she says.
But she says she loved the experience of her first reality show and was surprised when the producers of 'Bachelor in Paradise' invited her to try her luck again, this time in Fiji where the show was to be filmed.
During the filming, she met her bachelor Conor Canning, and unlike most couples on both the shows who broke up at the end of the shooting, they are still together, living in Tasmania.
It is very difficult to find someone with a dark skin tone in front of the cameras.
Being the only black woman on The Bachelor in Paradise in a franchise series often criticised for lack of diversity, Ms Viturino believes the issue goes beyond TV dating programs.
"If you watch Australian television, the shows during the day, the news, it is very difficult to find someone with a dark skin tone in front of the cameras. We always see the same physical appearance, a blond person, with blue eyes, with fair skin," she says.
"That's why when I'm at the show I make it a point to show my personality - I'm Australian, but I'm Brazilian, I'm of African descent. If I have to show my identity with braided hair on national television, that's how I'm going to do it."
"Australia has many descendants of Africans, South Americans, Asians. I do not see on Australian television any representation of people of other nationalities and colour."
Ms Viturino, who moved to Australia in 2012, believes her "bubbly" personality and her "Brazilian way" made her one of the most loved participants on the show.
“Being Brazilians, we are always happy, today is bad but tomorrow will be sunny. My Brazilian personality definitely helped me gain popularity."
"One of my favourite moments of Bachelor in Paradise was when I taught the girls to dance 'funk' from Rio. To this day, people talk about that.”
Also from SBS Portuguese
Australia's ‘Samba Queen’ to make her debut in Rio de Janeiro's 2020 Carnaval
