The game of Australian Survivor can be brutal, especially when revenge is involved.
Over at Vakama, Mat sat pretty. He had his alliance with Jacqui, Moana and Tarzan, his secret alliance with David and an idol in his pocket. But of course in the game of Survivor, things can quickly change.
As they walked into the reward challenge, the players were greeted with two words – tribe swap. Not only had Mat’s game play been thrown on its head, Shonee and Zach were back from Exile Beach and returned to the game on separate tribes.
Up for grabs in the reward challenge was the mysterious Pandora’s Box, an advantage for the winning tribe moving forward in the game.
Proving they had the strength to win the tug-of-war challenge, it was new-look Mokuta who scored the reward and lugged the box back to camp.
As they read the accompanying note, it was revealed that two keys had been hidden on their beach, both of which unlocked the box. As a mass game of hide-and-seek ensued, it was Nick who found the first key, slithered his way back to the box and nabbed the contents. When Jacqui found the second key and opened the now-empty box, questions were raised amongst the tribe. Cue Nick playing a stellar poker face.
The challenge for immunity was a battle of brawn, with tribes tasked to pull a cart to collect puzzle pieces and assemble a mind-boggling 3D puzzle. Nick for Mokuta and AK for Vakama led their team in the puzzle-solving, which ultimately saw Nick bring home the win for his tribe, slaying the green tribe’s losing streak in the process.
Back at Vakama, Abbey spoke about their tribe’s need for strength to win challenges (despite the fact her tribe fell during the puzzle solving!). Wording up the rest of the tribe about voting off Shonee, Abbey felt she had the numbers on her side.
Little did she know that Shonee was doing her own hustling to get the numbers against her nemesis, and convinced them voting out Abbey was the way to hit Mokuta hard, and protect each other ahead of merge.
At Tribal Council, the strength card was again vocalised by the remaining sporty alliance as the best way to move forward, but the social players had other ideas.
With the vote falling four to Abbey, two to Shonee, two to Lydia and one to Mat, Shonee was left grinning from ear-to-ear as Abbey’s torch was snuffed.
