Big Brother's 'Farmer Dave' asked a random stranger to have his baby. So she did.

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There are few Australian reality stars as recognisable as David 'Farmer Dave' Graham.

Bursting onto screens in 2006 as the 'token gay farmer' on Big Brother Australia, Dave has since become the country's most beloved dog trainer, starting up his canine showcase Muttley Crew and doing speaking events around the world.

Not too bad for a country lad from small-town Queensland.

In an exclusive chat with Mamamia, Dave said his decision to do Big Brother as a 26-year-old man who hadn't come out as gay to his family or rural community was not made lightly.

David decided that "the best way for me to be able to live my authentic life as a gay man" from the country was to join the show. At the time, Dave didn't feel like he had a better option.

"Australia back then was very prejudiced. Most gay men where I came from killed themselves… or would move to the big city or move overseas," he admitted.

"I saw Big Brother as being the biggest and best conversation anyone could have with our society and our people — there were two million people who would watch it daily."

David Graham was a breakout star on Big Brother in 2006. Image: Ten.

Australia was a vastly different place to be LGBTQIA+ in the '00s — especially for queer people living in rural communities — and same-sex marriage wasn't legalised until 2017.

Dave looks back at his BB experience with pride that he had the courage to put himself on such a huge platform.

"I was a young person, but I was very politically active — I wanted to change the world," he told Mamamia.

"I really do look back with incredible pride to know what a fearful young man I was. I was the youngest of 11 kids. I was very fearful. On the weight of my shoulders was all the kids that had committed suicide at my boarding school, all of the kids that had committed suicide in my region and… thousands more that were going through the same sh*t that I was going through — they just didn't feel accepted."

Dave ended up hatching the idea that if he began the show without disclosing his sexuality, this would give his housemates — and Australia — the chance to get to know him without any preconceived ideas.

"The plan was to go in there and come out in three weeks," he told us.

"I really wanted to allow people to question if they liked me more or if they liked me less. Why does my sexuality matter to them? Something that is so personal to an individual should not change anyone's values. I just wanted people to have a conversation within themselves."

However, that three-week plan quickly got thrown out the window when David noticed that his fellow housemate, Camilla Severi, was starting to develop romantic feelings for him.

"I had planned on waiting three weeks, but Camilla kind of had feelings for me and the other thing that was really important to me is: gays are not liars, gays are not devious, gays are not sneaky," he said.

"I knew that I had to reveal my sexuality rather than ever lie. And it was like three days in and I was like, 'Right, I've got to come out tonight because I can't keep dodging questions or coming across as though I'm not 100 per cent comfortable with my own body.'"

Dave gathered his housemates around the living room, as he nervously announced to the group: "I wanted you guys to get to know me on face value… but I'm the token farmer and the token gay guy."

Relive the moment below. Post continues after video.

The house erupted in cheers; it was a powerful moment for the Australian reality TV history books. That said, there was a weird emphasis on getting Camilla's response to David coming out, and she became quite upset by the revelation due to her feelings for the farmer.

It was a complicated situation that Dave has since discussed with his former BB co-star.

"I was talking to Camilla a couple of weeks ago," he admitted.

"She lives in Indonesia and we had a massive talk session. She said she's only had one regret and that was she took a moment that was really special to me and made it about her," Dave recalled.

"But for me, it was really important that she did that because it was so overwhelming."

At the time, Dave was grappling with how his family would take the news that he was gay.

"I didn't know if I would be completely disowned. I did have some brothers who did want to disown me, but luckily, I was in there so long that conversations happened around them and… they'd actually changed their minds."

When Dave was eventually eliminated, he kissed his then-partner Sherif, in what became one of the first man-on-man kisses on live reality TV on a mainstream Australian network.

After leaving the Big Brother house, Dave was told about the impact his story had on everyday Australians.

"So many politicians have told me that watching me in their younger years actually changed their views and allowed family members in their own families to come out," he said.

Dave was a breakout BB contestant, even landing a gig on Dancing with The Stars the following year. He couldn't escape his instant fame. "I was in an Adelaide shopping centre and had tens of thousands of people come to a shopping centre to say 'G'day' — that's pretty freaking weird for a guy that couldn't even walk into a room full of people," he recalled.

"I made an internationally award-winning documentary on dingoes. I was over in the United States doing a pilot for Oprah Winfrey. Things were insane and crazy for a kid who just wanted to live his own life on a farm."

Thankfully, things have settled down for Graham, who now travels the world as a successful dog trainer and keynote speaker.

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A post shared by David Graham (@farmerdavek9m8)

"I'm getting great insights into man's best friend and sharing those with the public. Every weekend, I'm doing performances or MC'ing stadiums to share the love of Australian culture."

And yes, he still gets recognised as 'Farmer Dave' from Big Brother.

"People still speak to me every day and my dad, who is 92… he said, 'Not a day goes by in town where people don't say how much you changed their thinking and how proud they are of you.'"

Dave has since become a father himself. In the last 20 years, Dave has welcomed five children from three different families.

"They are the greatest joy and I get to spend so much time with them. They're spread right around Australia and I get to see them so regularly — I get to see them every month. On Father's Day, I spent time with my two boys. Nothing comes close to the joy that I get from those kids," he said.

"I had all this pain growing up, thinking that I would be the end of my hundreds of thousands of years of genetics, all those ancestors. I felt like a failure being a gay man. And being a farmer — it's all about producing, everything from germinating seeds to breeding animals."

"Nothing comes close to holding a child and knowing that you're not a failure, you're not a waste… the biggest comment that I got from people, mostly women, was 'what a waste.'

David shared that women often comment that his good looks are 'wasted' because he doesn't date women.

"They're saying it in such a complimentary way, but to hear it day in, day out… When I hold my sons, when I hold my daughters, when I hold my children, I keep saying, 'I'm not a waste.' It is a bit of a headf**kery when for 20 years, you've just heard that."

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A post shared by David Graham (@farmerdavek9m8)

David's expanding family has helped heal that part of him. He met one of the mothers 18 years ago under random circumstances.

"I was MC'ing an event in South Bank in Brisbane, celebrating an inner-city youth organisation, and I saw this beautiful human in the audience. While I was doing my speech, I was like, 'I want to have children with you,' which is the weirdest thing. That is not a normal thing to say [laughs]," David said.

"She came up afterwards and said, 'That was a bit weird.' And I went, 'Holy sh*t, that was weird. I'm so sorry, I don't know what came over me.' But after lots of getting to know each other, she said, 'I felt the same thing. That's why it's so weird. That's why I had to come and speak to you.' And then she introduced me to her girlfriend and they are married to this day."

"We've had two wonderful kids together. And there were lots of trials and tribulations with creating that family, but we have so much love for each other. I get to see them very, very regularly. And they are my priority to be very much their dad."

Dave has now created multiple special families with five kids and five mothers living across the Eastern states of Australia.

"I went along to one of my daughter's schools for a Father's Day event," he shared, adding that her mother was single when they started their family.

"She was a single mother by choice. She's a straight woman and to be able to fill that role that I think so many kids… they don't have someone that they can point to and go, 'That's my dad.' I've been to her school several times, and it just fills you with so much joy."

Dave is hoping to have more kids in the future. "I don't think I'm finished," he said.

"My parents come from big families and most of my siblings have had quite a few kids. We're a big breeding mob. And we're farmers. That's what we do. It's in our DNA to make more good stock."

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A post shared by David Graham (@farmerdavek9m8)

He said the next step "would be about creating my own family and then you've got to find a surrogate."

Dave has been in a long-term relationship with his partner Shazli, who he got engaged to in 2023.

"The engagement ended, but we're still together. This is probably why I feel like a mission that I have to allow people to be authentic in their own skins hasn't ended," David said.

"My partner is a refugee due to his sexuality — he's from a Muslim country — and that confrontation of his culture and his sexuality was a lot for him. We have our very private monogamous relationship."

He admitted they came from backgrounds with parallels. "I've gone on the journey with him because I was 26 when I came out from a culture of death in the rural area because of my sexuality and he had come from that as well, coming from a Muslim background," he said.

"But yeah, here we are five or six years later and we are very, very connected, and he spends lots of time with my kids and loves it."

That said, don't expect to see photos of Shazli on his Instagram — or many pics of his five kids.

"I don't post photos of my children. I don't have photos of my partner. It's about respect, and it's about when he's open to it," he said.

"With the mums of my kids, when they're feeling there's a purpose to it, we'll do that. But largely, I'm a very protective person and will always make sure that someone's involved in that journey."

In the almost 20 years since David set foot in the BB house, along with Camilla, he said he's still friends with Anna Lind-Hansen, who was best known for coining the all-time Australian phrase 'Game on, moles.'

"She is just the greatest human. She's a real estate agent, has two wonderful children, and she's living her absolute best, authentic life," he said.

"We had the opposite experience in the house where she just really started to shut down… so the fact that we two have just become the best of mates over time is a testament to that experience of putting the widest variation of humans in a social experiment for three months."

In 2022, Dave competed in the Channel 7 reboot of Big Brother, but it was an experience that he doesn't look back on as fondly as his first time in the house.

"It was like a distant echo of the first experience. The first experience was a big mob of people dumped in a house and completely shut off from the world," he said.

"The second time around, it was all about the game. It was not about revealing who you were as a person or getting to know other people as people."

The best takeaway was his beautiful friendship with Reggie Sorenson, with the pair becoming inseparable on the 2022 season.

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A post shared by David Graham (@farmerdavek9m8)

"We were speaking only a couple of nights ago. We do Friday Night Lives on Facebook. Sometimes, we have tens of thousands of people watching," he said.

"We're still very, very, very close. And for me, going into that second experience and the uncomfortableness of it was all made worthwhile because of my friendship with Reg."

And now, Big Brother is being rebooted (again!) and brought back to where it belongs: at Dreamworld and aired on Channel Ten.

Dave isn't confident that the glory days of Big Brother can ever be recreated.

"I think it's extraordinarily difficult… now, everyone has a device in their hand that is impacting their brains on what is expected of them, how to act, how to look, how to be," he said.

But he does have some advice for the next generation to share.

"Be yourself. Everyone else is taken. If you want to be an actor, go to acting school and be an actor. If you want to be an electrician, get a trade school and be an electrician. But if you're going to go on reality TV, that's your opportunity to embrace who you truly are because there is nothing more freeing than putting yourself on display — whether people like you, hate you, want you dead, or want to celebrate you."

Feature image: Ten/Instagram/@farmerdavek9m8.