With Brooke and Keeley clearly up against the rest of the tribe, the duo cleverly designed a fake idol in an effort to dissuade the tribe from writing their names down. While there was some doubt amongst the tribe that Brooke’s homemade idol was legit, it was enough to cause some panic.
“I never thought I was at risk,” Blanche told 10, “I knew Brooke’s idol was fake… she had never brought out an idol before the vote, she wasn’t letting anyone touch it, she was just tucking it away. It was so obvious it was fake, and I’m a rookie!
“This is what I was telling Ben, just stick to the plan. And you know what? If he had stuck to the plan, Keeley would have gone home. It was a nightmare!”
Knowing that his name was in the mix, Ben made some quick moves to throw Blanche into the mix as another option, splitting the vote and saving himself.
“As soon as my name came out, it was the first name out of the urn. I turned to Sally, and I was like… It’s me. I just knew.”
Blanche said that every single tribal council she went to was similarly chaotic, with people popping up, strategising and making new plans on the fly, putting idols around their necks and changing votes on a whim. But seeing how the returnee players handled themselves in those moments of chaos versus the newbies was one of the reasons Blanche had been targeting players like Mark and Brooke from early on.
“I wasn’t a fan of having returnees on the beach,” she laughed. “They’ve just got such an advantage, they’re all calm and collected in those really stressful times.
“As a newbie, you just don’t have that experience and your mind is running every which way, you’re starving, sleep-deprived, and they’ve been there before. They’ve got such an advantage in those really, really intense times.”
One of those “really, really intense times” occurred when Aisha was blindsided with an idol in her pocket, an idol that technically belonged to Blanche. Having found a clue tucked into a peanut butter sandwich she won at a reward, Blanche got Aisha’s help finding the idol back at their camp.
The high of finding an idol was quickly squashed when Aisha was blindsided, and didn’t have an opportunity to hand the idol over to Blanche.
“It was just a massive rookie mistake, I should have immediately gotten it from her and I know that now,” Blanche admits. “You could just see my brain ticking over. If I asked for it there, everyone would know I’d have an idol and would I want that public?
“In hindsight, it would have been great if everyone knew I had an idol, but that was just total inexperience… as a rookie, I just didn’t know to do it, and everything happened so fast. It’s way faster than you think! It was just a total disaster.”
Despite being the collateral damage of Brooke and Keeley’s idol bluff, Blanche was able to tick off every major milestone of the Survivor experience, save for making it to the final tribal.
“You want to make it to swap, you want to make it to merge, and you want to make it to jury, so it’s a pretty good accomplishment,” she admitted. “When I got to Jury Villa, Mark sat me down and debriefed with me and took the time to have a really good chat with me, which I really appreciated because you just want to talk about the game!”
Looking back on her Australian Survivor experience, Blanche said there are a few tweaks she’d make to her game.
“If I did it again, I wouldn’t emotionally invest in people,” she said. “I’m such an empath, with my work as an acupuncturist, I heal people. I had Blanche’s rehabilitation centre every afternoon, giving people massages… I wouldn’t emotionally invest in people. I’d be a little more cutthroat.
“My game was too obvious,” she continued. “Everyone knew if Blanche wanted them out, and it was just way too obvious.
“That was the hardest thing because I went in with full intentions of deceit, the lies, the manipulation,” Blanche said. “But everything went out the door for me, and I was just ridiculously raw, authentic, and honest Blanche. That was definitely my downfall in the game, but I was me out there.
“Whenever anyone spoke to me, they were like, ‘Blanche, you’re the realest person on this island,’ and I was like… yep, I am!”
