Mark Wales’ shock Survivor Australia Blood v Water win five years in the making

After bombing-out in season two of Survivor Australia, the 2022 season winner has taken home the crown. Here’s what happened in the Blood v Water finale.

It is the Survivor win five years in the making.

Ex SAS commander Mark Wales has pocketed $500,000 after taking out the series crown on Survivor Australia: Blood v Water.

The season saw Wales, 42, compete alongside wife Sam Gash, whom he met in the 2017 run of the Channel 10 reality show.

“It is just crazy,” Wales told The Daily Telegraph.

“It hasn’t sunk in yet. We didn’t count our chickens so we haven’t really discussed winning in a tonne of detail.”

Survivor Australia winner Mark Wales with his wife Samantha Gash. Picture: Darren Leigh Roberts

Despite the show being filmed several months ago, three different endings were shot with Wales learning the outcome hours before the series finale went to air. He and Gash flew to Sydney from Melbourne for the reveal, with Chrissy Zaremba and Shayelle Lajoie announced as runners-up.

Wales joked that he was looking at spending the winnings on an “entry level Lamborghini”.

The pair, who are parents to four-year-old son Harry and live in the Dandenong Ranges outside Melbourne, see it as a win for the whole family.

“We are the same as any other family, we both work, we’ve got a young kid and we’ve got a home and mortgage so for us, we’ve gained something that would have taken us a decade of working together or more to try and do,” Wales said.

The couple competed in the Blood v Water series alongside one another, and met during the 2017 season.

“It is a pretty big deal. It buys us a lot of breathing space … a lot of time together, which is great.”

Wales described his gameplay as “vicious”. They were famously voted off the 2017 season by fellow contestants who saw them as too much competition as a duo.

“We both remember season two where the game got pulled out from under us so you know how quickly it can be taken, even if you try and do the right thing,” Wales explained. “The other thing is we left Harry our boy at home so we had to play hard.”

Gash, 37, added: “Mark stuck by his alliance the whole time, that is a nice guy move to really only in the final hours turn. Making cut throat moves, I had to do it to my alliance but it is all strategy, it isn’t personal.”

While Wales is hanging up his Survivor hat with the win, Gash isn’t done with the reality TV format.

“We have never known Survivor without each other,” she said. “I think I would like to have an experience on my own. Imagine turning on people that had your back and that you had their back but you knew it was the right move for the bigger game. It was hard. I didn’t get to play with my people because I had to get rid of them.”

Originally published as Mark Wales’ shock Survivor Australia Blood v Water win five years in the making