In a surprise tribal council on Day 29, Vavau did not send intended target Kristie home but rather saw Brooke take Sue over to the Saanapu side.
While Sue knew she on the bottom of her new tribe’s pecking order, she was also happy to be with a winning team and enjoyed the spoils of a brekky food reward. Back on Vavau, tightly aligned Conner and Kate worked to pit Aganoa originals Phoebe and Kristie against each other.
Without a hidden immunity idol to protect her this time, Phoebe thought her manipulative powers would help her but it was not to be and Kristie made it through the vote.
Who spoke to Phoebe Timmins, a Sydney-based, 27-year-old criminal lawyer, about becoming the eleventh person to leave Australian Survivor.
Q: As a fan, you admired Parvati Shallow’s game. Did you pattern your strategy after hers?
A: I’m a big Parvati fan. I think Parvati was just so good at making social alliances and knowing which strings to pull with which people. If she needed to flirt, she flirted, if she needed to build an alliance, she did that, if she needed to use an idol, she did that. I think her strategic timing was great. She’s a great player, one of the best.
Q: Parvati certainly wasn’t afraid to play idols and neither were you. Which was your favourite play?
A: Probably the Craig blindside because the Rohan vote, I had just lost my entire alliance in two days because El and Lee went to Saanapu and Rohan was gone first vote, so that was a really sad moment for me, and nobody listened to me! I was gutted.
Q: Craig said he never once saw you looking for the idol. How did you do that without raising suspicion?
A: Yes! So with that, I woke up at the crack of dawn, just when you could make out, like, the shadow of your hand, and after the Rohan vote, I went searching for it. I knew that I was on the bottom and I had seen Craig looking, so I thought, if he thinks something is out there, I think something’s out there and I kept my search really focused and I ended up finding it. It was amazing. After that, because I didn’t want anyone to think I had it, I purposefully never went back into the mangroves. I probably looked like I wasn’t pulling my weight around camp because that’s where all the firewood was. I just didn’t go collecting.
Q: After you got to Vavau, it was one tough tribal council after another. How did you stay focused enough to play on?
A: I said to myself before the game that I was always going to make sure that I was thinking strategically and not making decisions based on emotion, so it was my job to deal with everything out there, even the hard stuff, whether it was staying awake all night because it just rained and all you could do was sit there and take it and I was just going to sit there and take it. I was never going to let my emotions get the better of me.
Q: Does Kristie deserve an Oscar for all her Survivor performances and did you ever think she was playing you?
A: I mean, I think on the Craig vote, we both did our parts well. She’s amazing. She’s so good. I think there is a lot of unpredictability with Kristie [but] I think she played really well. I can only give her credit where it’s due.
Q: Was your friendship genuine?
A: Kristie and I had a great connection out there. We had so many laughs, like hacking into coconuts or we’d go swimming together or sunbathing together. We connected so well. She’s a really positive person; she’s got a lovely soul. I’ve got so much love for her. She’s a bit quirky, but that’s just part of the charm of Kristie.
Q: How badly did you want to go to Saanapu when Brooke sat in on tribal council?
A: Oh, I really hoped she would have picked me because I was really hoping I could get to a point where I could reunite with El and Lee and either fold into their alliance or at least pull them in as numbers. Who knows what could have happened, but you can’t live like that ultimately. You do the best with the hand you’re dealt. Sadly I drew the short straw in the tribe swap but I was on a losing tribe the whole game.
Q: Did all the show twists do you in?
A: The tribal where there was a tribe swap, that was the second time in the game where I had gone to vote out an ally and an alliance member and then we didn’t vote. It happened with Kat and then it happened again with Kristie. When that information comes out, you have to deal with the consequences and it’s pretty hard to come back from that. It was tricky being on the wrong side of those twists and certainly at the last tribal council, a lot of information was revealed that I would have preferred for it not to have been. We all had agreed we weren’t going to say much because we knew a Saanapu member was going to be there. I didn’t get an opportunity to hide what I had done. But what can you do?
Q: Now there are three Vavau. Do you side with them in the merge or do you bleed Aganoa?
A: I hope they all do well, but they’ve all got their work cut out for them because they are all certainly on the wrong side of the numbers now that Saanapu have decimated Vavau. Who knows who will win but I will be watching and I’m going to be cheering on my original Aganoans. Hopefully one of them brings it home. Hopefully El! We were really close out there, so I’m on Team El.
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