Shay Williamson
Whakatāne, New Zealand · Alone Australia Season 3
- Age on show
- 30
How far did Shay get? (tap to reveal)
- Days lasted
- 76
- Placement
- 1st
How Shay's season ended (reveals the result)
Winner. Professional possum trapper since age 16; survived largely on eels, fish, plants and worms; a pademelon catch around day 67 sustained him through the final stretch. Medical team flagged concern over his weight loss but cleared him to continue; won when runner-up Muzza was medically evacuated shortly after. Longest duration of any completed Alone Australia season to that point.
Our take on the run
That patience produced 76 days, the longest completed run in Alone Australia history at the time. It was close. Murray James pushed him all the way to day 73 before a medical evacuation for low blood pressure, and Corinne Ooms reached day 70, so the top three were separated by six days after more than two months alone. Medical staff had flagged concerns about Williamson's own weight loss along the way and he kept clearing the checks his rivals eventually failed. Around day 67 a pademelon catch added a rare protein windfall on top of an already working system, a bonus rather than a rescue.
Our take, missing item list and all, his run is proof that gear talk can miss the point entirely. Nobody on this site's data can tell you what was in his bag, but the show's own record tells you exactly how he ate for 76 days, and that is the more useful lesson anyway. Unheroic calories that keep arriving beat impressive calories that might not. It ended with his wife Abby walking into camp to give him the news in person, one of the more emotional finale moments the franchise has produced.
The loadout, examined
Shay Williamson is the one winner in our records with no confirmed ten item list, and it is worth explaining why rather than guessing. The broadcaster for this cast only ever published each contestant's top three picks, not the full loadout, so we cannot line his kit up against the other winners item for item the way we can for everyone else on this site. What we can examine instead is the approach, and his approach came straight from his day job.
Williamson had worked as a professional possum trapper since he was 16, and that trade is built on patience rather than the single big score. Small, steady, low intervention catches taken in volume beat a rare large kill that might not happen at all. Eels, worms and foraged plants formed the daily backbone of his season, the exact kind of unglamorous, repeatable food source a trapper's mindset is trained to find and keep finding.
Shay's loadout, item by item
Shay's full 10-item selection hasn't been reliably sourced yet. Every contestant picks from the same approved list, so the closest look at what they likely carried is the show's official item rules and the gear other Australia S3 contestants brought.
Compare with the rest of the Australia S3 cast or see what every winner carried.