In a clean sweep victory, Mark Wales won Australian Survivor: Blood Vs Water with 10 votes, with neither Shayelle Lajoie and Chrissy Zaremba being able to secure any for themselves.
Going into the Final Tribal Council of the season, Shay told POPSUGAR Australia that she “thought there was a chance” she could win, “because you don’t really know what the jury has been saying back at the villa” and because she wasn’t sure if the jury was holding a grudge against Mark.
In fact, Shay was concerned that Chrissy would be scoring votes because she was “everyone’s best friend in the game”.
It wasn’t until the jury began asking their questions that they started to “feel where [it was] going”, and for Shay and Chrissy, this came with an unpleasant realisation.
“Chrissy and I, it took us three or four questions to realise ‘we are getting hanged. We are getting crucified here in front of everyone’,” she recalled.
“They were really nasty, to be completely honest,” she said of the jury. “A lot of it was coming from Jordie and Jesse [Hansen] and you could feel that they were fuelled by a bit of spite or anger that they weren’t sitting in those seats.”
Shay said that “there was a lot of calling us goats in a very negative tone”, and said that “they were saying that Chrissy and I rode on coat tails to get there, which was interesting, because no one actually had me in their final five or final three plans, they were always like ‘you’re going tonight’.”
Recalling how many times she’d been told that if she didn’t win Immunity she’d be eliminated that night, Shay added “for them to then go from not wanting me eliminated to saying like, ‘you don’t even deserve to be here’ was just such a slap in the face”.
“I kind of blacked out a little bit,” Shay said. “I just remember being brutally embarrassed.”
Staring into the fire, Shay said she felt like her brain “wasn’t really on“.
“I was hungry, I was tired, and then on top of that I was just shocked at the way they were conducting themselves, and then they would just turn to Mark and say like, ‘amazing game! Here’s my question for you!’” she said.
“Chrissy and I just looked at each other and were like ‘oh. Okay. We’ve lost this by a long shot and now we have to just sit here and cop it’.”
While Chrissy fought back at the jury, pointing out that she’d “done something right” to be sitting at the Final Tribal Council, Shay said that she “couldn’t muster up the strength” to defend herself.
Going into the season, Shay had thought from watching previous seasons that she’d be able to play like Brains Vs Brawn winner Hayley Leake.
“I thought I could jump from this alliance to that alliance, and then at the end of the night come back to camp and have a laugh about it and then, onto the next challenge, but instead, it felt like high school,” she said.
“The majority were just comfortable sitting there picking people off, so I couldn’t even go up and get to know them, I couldn’t get involved in their social circle, and the more I tried, the more of a loser I was made out to be, I just had to sit there and be that kind of loner, Purgatory kind of person,” she explained.
Still, Shay’s physical dominance throughout the game — which saw her win an impressive four Immunity necklaces — saw her fight her way all the way to the end.
During the gruelling final Immunity Challenge, which she described as “fun” Shay beat Mark with ease.
“I honestly wanted to stay up there for so long,” she said. “You don’t see it in the edit, but at the end, I climbed down to the last point just to see what it was like, and I really just wanted to stay there and push myself!
“But it was time to just… not show off and just jump in the water and get it over with.”
“Honestly, thank you for bringing that up,” she added, “because up to this point I’ve just been focusing on Mark’s win and basically my loss, but that was a big accomplishment, so thank you.”
It’s been quite the journey over the course of the season for Shay, and she said that she’s “very happy that it’s all kind of come to a very beautiful end”.
While she may not have won the title of Sole Survivor, or the $500k prize money, she said that “everyone’s been so wonderful” to her.
“There’s been so much support, people saying the typical ‘you’re the winner in my eyes!’, you know, a lot of people saying ‘if the Australian public voted you would’ve taken it out!’ and I’m like ‘yes’,” she laughed. “If only!”
Shay said that in the end, she doesn’t want to do anything to “take away from Mark’s amazing win”, though.
“Like, so well deserving, he’s an incredible player,” she said. “Incredible lying, incredible lie detecting, incredible ability to place himself in those little nooks and crannies at the exact right time.”
Miss the finale? Australian Survivor: Blood Vs Water is streaming now on 10 Play.
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