SHANNON, 26 SURVIVOR NZ
Shannon clocked-up 17 years of being a self-confessed Survivor super-fan when she finally landed a place on the Kiwi version of the show last year. It should have been a dream come true, but she soon discovered it was a mentally-draining nightmare.
“I felt that I was losing my mind towards the end,” she tells. “For about 90% of the time, you’re doing nothing. It wore me down. Each day was harder than the last.”
Shannon admits that being stranded with strangers on a Nicaraguan beach, surviving on a fist-sized portion of rice each day, was incredibly tough. But it was life after the show that was most challenging. “My stomach was not used to eating proper food, so every time I ate, I’d vomit. And no matter how many showers I took, the sand never left my hair.”
On her return home to South Canterbury, the zookeeper learnt she was the show’s most disliked contestant.
“Watching it was harder than doing the show,” Shannon admits. “I got quite a bit of backlash from the public. I was soon pretty obsessed with reading comments online. Every single day, I’d see if new people had commented about me.”
So Shannon decided it was time to move on, securing a job at Auckland Zoo and relocating with her boyfriend Cameron Beeton to the City of Sails for a new life. “Finally, when I started to talk to people, they were lovely,” she tells. “It felt so good to sink my teeth back into normal life again.”