Devon is more emotionally invested in winning MasterChef Australia than most, given that he postponed his wedding to his childhood sweetheart to take part in the series.

“We’ve been engaged for a couple of years,” says Devon of his fiancée Catherine. “Our wedding was booked for February, which was when filming was happening, so we’ve had to postpone it. That was a really hard decision. Catherine had been planning our dream day, friends were going to travel from overseas and we’d progressed on a lot of the details. But Cat was very understanding that this is a once in a lifetime opportunity, and we’ll reschedule the wedding.”

Devon grew up in Auckland and met Catherine, who is a nurse, when he was 15-years-old at a party, with the carpenter saying “it was love at first sight”. After several years living in New Zealand and a stint in London, the couple has lived in Queensland for nearly three years.

The other true love in his life has been food. He and younger brother Blake and older brother Conrad have big appetites and he fondly remembers how his grandmother inspired him to cook, and reminisces at the thought of afternoons spent in his grandma’s kitchen watching her cook old favourites like roasts and carrot cakes.

“When I was a teenager I had a part time job as a kitchen hand in a restaurant, where I was mainly washing dishes,” he says. “During school I was offered a building apprenticeship, which was great because I was good with my hands and couldn’t see myself finishing school.

“At the same time I was offered a chef apprenticeship but I was young and didn’t think I could handle the rough hours of working in a kitchen, so I took the building apprenticeship.”

Close to 15 years has passed, but Devon’s interest in cooking has never waned, and he dreams of one day opening his own restaurant. He has even lived in the food capital of the world, France, where he indulged his love of fine wines.

“I went to Alsace for six months when I was in my 20s and worked through a wine harvest,” he says. “Learning how to make wine was fantastic. But it was a bit of a hazy blur to be honest!”

Devon hopes his time on MasterChef Australia will be anything but a blur, and is hopeful that he can win over the judges with his country rustic cooking.