Country girl Daisy has been one of the toughest competitors on Australian Survivor. But when she was sent to Exile Beach following Sunday night’s epic tribal council, it all became too much.
“Exile Beach definitely broke me,” Daisy, 24, tells TV WEEK. “It was some of the worst weather in Survivor history. I was alone on a beach, needing to light a fire and build a shelter. It was horrendous.
“The rain just kept coming and coming. I was soaking wet. I remember lying there and starting to sob… I thought about walking seven or eight times.”
But ultimately, the experience fuelled Daisy’s fire to fight for her place in the game and beat the people who’d sent her there.
“Exile Beach made me realise how tough I really am,” she says. “It made me hungrier to win.”
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Being confined to Exile Beach was almost too much for Daisy.
The Queensland travel agent says she lost the least amount of weight of anyone who made it past the merge. But she still “really battled” with having to live on small amounts of food.
“I definitely felt weaker,” she says. “The head-spins started on about day 15. You can feel your blood pressure and your blood sugar drop. Your concentration goes, and sometimes you were so hungry it was hard to remember who you were voting for.”
Daisy says she went into “better safe than sorry” mode, playing her immunity idol when she didn’t really need to.
“The paranoia sets in,” she explains. “It’s hard to trust your gut, because that’s how blindsides happen. Mentally, everyone struggles out there.”
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Surprisingly, though, the diet had a positive effect on her health. Being a sufferer of endometriosis, Daisy wasn’t sure how she would cope on Survivor.
“I had some pretty serious surges of pain prior to going in, so I was really worried about it,” she admits.
Luckily, she found that living on bland rations eased the symptoms of her chronic condition.
“The good thing about rice and beans is it’s an anti-inflammatory diet – unintentionally,” she explains. “You’re not eating all those bad things that are making it worse.
“So I found it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.”
Australian Survivor airs Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, 7.30pm, on 10.
