They didn’t dominate in challenges, and some of them never made big strategic moves – heck, half of Survivor’s finalists couldn’t even tell you what a flint was.
But stay-at-home mum Tara Pitt, 32, advertising producer Pete Conte, 22, and flight attendant Jericho Malabonga, 25, have managed to pull off a clean sweep of Survivor’s biggest players in the final weeks.
Now they’re turning on each other, fighting for Australia’s Sole Survivor crown.
If you’re a superfan left scratching your head after Tara flipped, sending home series fave cocky Locky and serious contender Michelle Dougan, 33, then you’ve truly underestimated the remaining contenders.
Here, they’re pleading their case to NW…
In a shock move, Tara flipped sending Michelle home.
It’s a game of social strategy, of making and breaking friendships, lying and backstabbing. And, it’s this social strategy that really impacted the final four, with Peter admitting he was forced to see a psychologist after leaving the island.
“It was crazy – I did find it mentally draining,” he confesses to NW. “I didn’t think the show would break me as it did.”
Pete admits that following his confrontation with Locky, where he was branded a “goat”, things went south.
“My whole alliance was gone or had turned on me,” he reveals. “I wasn’t spiralling out of control, but the strategising was overwhelming. Now, it’s a solo game for me.”
Well, kind of.
Pete tells us that he did walk away with new friends Jemima, Sally and Rover – Samatau’s camp rats.
“They’d scatter across the floor and bang into Locky while he was sleeping. One night a rat crawled across Annaliese’s face,” he spills.
Pete say’s nothing fazed him much.
Unlike Michelle Dougan, 33, who says the “rats as big as cats” were the hardest thing to deal with, Pete says nothing fazed him much.
“Sterilising water got too hard, so we let it go – everything was a bit incestuous, too. Everyone was drinking out of each other’s water bottles,” he says.
“Good thing we were all STI checked before we came in!”
In fact, hygiene in general was a non-issue for the final four.
Tara – who reveals she lost more than 11kg on the show – tells NW they learnt the way of the land to keep clean.
“We made toothbrushes out of palm fronds and I would use the charcoal to keep my teeth white,” she says. “Brushing them the first time, my gums were bleeding.”
But bleeding gums didn’t hurt anywhere near as much as the lying and cheating she had to do to score a spot in the final week.
“Paranoia, for me, really set in – you had people always checking out what’s going on,” Tara says, spilling that the mental effects of the show travelled back to Queensland with her. “When I first got home, I was quite paranoid.”
Will Tara and Jericho team up?
And she probably has tribe members like Jericho – who’s been sussing out new alliances following his buddy Luke’s elimination – to thank for that!
“Oh, man, I was screwed,” Jericho says before admitting he “had so much fun playing around with people’s heads”.
“People might go, ‘Oh, that’s evil,’ but it’s part of the game,” he reasons.
“You’re at the point where you see a finish line, and it becomes more intense that it’s testing everyone’s relationships.”
Jericho says that it’s “every man for himself” now after using Luke and Locky as “human shields”, then disposing of them.
“Now they’re gone, you start to realise, how are you going to fend for yourself? How are you going to start to show and prove to those alpha males [on the jury] that I’m worthy of winning. Like, ‘Yeah, I got rid of you.’”
Jericho has his eyes on the prize.
Despite his charge to the finish line, Jericho says the stress of the competition got the better of him – and he collapsed.
“Everything started going black. I even said to Henry, ‘I’m going down,’ and then, crack!” he recalls. “All I remember was waking up with sand on my face.”
But that’s old news as he fixes his eyes on the prize.
“These people have the same amount of chance of winning this game,” he says. “So now you start to think, ‘When do I strike before you strike against me?’”
