Jonathan’s SHOCK EXIT
TERI DECIDED TO LOSE WEIGHT AFTER HER DOCTOR GAVE SOME SHOCKING NEWS
Australian Survivor has been affected by the coronavirus pandemic, with host Jonathan Lapaglia unable to return to Australia in time for the finale.
The Australian government’s instruction that all overseas arrivals must self-isolate for 14 days meant the Us-based host was unable to return in time for last week’s planned taping.
“Endemol Shine Australia is following government directives as they are issued in preparation for the filming of Australian Survivor: All Stars Finale,” said a spokesperson. “host Jonathan Lapaglia will stay in the USA rather than travel to Australia.”
With Jonathan, 50, unable to fulfil his hosting duties, producers confirmed that Osher Günsberg would replace him.
“Survivor superfan Osher Günsberg will step in as guest MC at the
All Stars Finale.”
The popular Bachelor franchise host regularly shares his musings about the show on social media and has also appeared on spin-off commentary podcasts and programs, such as Australian Survivor Talking Tribal.
But the production company’s statement also confirmed Jonathan would have some level of involvement in the finale via a “satellite link from LA”.
Unlike previous finales, this one would be filmed without fans in attendance. “The welfare of everyone involved in our shows is our number one priority so the filming will not have a live audience,” read the statement.
Jonathan also expressed his dismay in an Instagram comment.
“It’s going to be tough for everyone. Hopefully the government will step up and support those in financial need.”
Sitting in front of her doctor, Teri Vallely was overcome with feelings of shame. Weighing 158kg, the Aussie mum of three was morbidly obese and had just been given some sinister news.
“I had a lot of knee troubles and I guess you could expect that from someone who was so heavy,” Teri, 52, recalls to New Idea.
“They did some scans of my knees and the doctor told me the bone density was like rice bubbles.”
It was a scary thought for a woman aged only in her 40s.
For a long time, Teri had known she needed to change her lifestyle.
Poor diet habits and zero exercise meant she piled on weight for years.
“It was very uncomfortable, and I don’t think I actually knew how big I was. Even lying in my bed when I wanted to roll over, I had to lift myself up to turn over – my bulge was that big,” Teri admits.
“My feet always hurt and I couldn’t walk very far. I did start to get ulcers on my legs at one point because I just had such bad circulation. It was really embarrassing.”
Teri was an emotional eater and her go-to food included chocolate, chips, soft-drink, takeaway food and cheesy pasta. After having three children, it didn’t take long for the busy mum to binge-eat her way to tipping the scales at 158kg.
“I think I was just really unhappy and I became very much an emotional eater.
“I didn’t have great health, I wasn’t very active and I was also dealing with a marriage breakdown,” Teri recalls.
“I sort of got into that binge-eating cycle. So if I was
happy I did something to celebrate that always involved food. If I was sad, upset, stressed, that’d involve food.”
But Teri refuses to blame her weight gain on anything but herself.
“I don’t really have any excuses. I realise now, looking back, that I’m completely responsible for allowing myself to get that large,” Teri says.
After years of yo-yo dieting, Teri realised it would take more than a quick fix to
“IF I CAN DO IT, ANYONE CAN. YOU DON’T NEED TO BE IMPRISONED BY YOUR BODY OR MIND”
change her life.
It started with a little help from her new husband, who encouraged her to go on light, one-kilometre walks.
Teri then discovered Kim Beach, a weight-loss and wellness coach who helped her with a diet and exercise routine that would finally work.
It was hard to make the complete switch from a sedentary lifestyle, but eventually the results started to show.
“I did two of the eight-week programs without exercise and in the first round I lost 12kg, and in the second I lost 14.5kg,” Teri says happily.
“Then I started regular weight training. I’d get up at 4.30 in the morning and go to the gym about 5-6 times a week. Now [my husband and I] do weight-training probably four times a week, but we aim to do a 4-7km walk five or six days a week.”
The hardest part for Teri was cutting out the food she had become so dependent on.
Her diet was completely transformed. She cut out sugar and, every Sunday, she prepares nutritious meals for the week ahead.
“Kim’s program is an interesting one,” Teri says. “She gets you to eat five meals a day and the first part of the diet is usually carb- and protein-based, and then meals four and five will be proteinand good fat-based,” she says.
Since then, Teri has lost a staggering 70kg, and now weighs a healthy 88kg. The weight loss has not only transformed Teri’s health and mental wellbeing, but she thinks it saved her life.
Last year, Teri was diagnosed with breast cancer and strongly believes that, in her 158kg frame, she would not have coped with the illness.
“We detected it really early and if it wasn’t for my weight loss, I really do believe that it would have been a different outcome,” she says.
“The size that I was, I just don’t think I would have detected it early. I hate to think … I actually felt sick when I entertained the thought a while back.”
Now, Teri is thriving in a healthy body she’s fought long and hard to achieve.
“If I can do it, anyone can. I’ve been a massive yo-yo dieter all my adult life and you don’t need to be imprisoned by your body or your mind,” she says.
After taking a break from her busy life in London, Kiwiborn Claire Nelson was aching for adventure.
In May 2018, the 36-yearold freelance journalist had set out to do a half-day, 10km hike through the famous Joshua Tree National Park in southern California.
It was exactly the type of outdoor escapism she needed – a world away from her life back in the UK.
Setting off into the vast wilderness at 9am, Claire didn’t know she was walking straight into a nightmare.
After slipping off a boulder and tumbling 8m to the bottom of a canyon, Claire shattered her pelvis and sprained her ankle.
With no mobile phone signal in the middle of the park, every call to 911 failed.
Unable to move in the blistering sun, and with no-one around for kilometres, the experienced hiker was convinced she would die alone and helpless in the desert.
“The heat during the day was the hardest. The pelvic pain was unbearable … but if I stayed still, I could keep it manageable,” Claire tells New Idea.
“With the heat … it not only burns you, it takes out all
“I HONESTLY THOUGHT I WAS GOING MAD. ON THE THIRD DAY, I STARTED HEARING THINGS”
your energy. It physically drains you, it mentally and emotionally drains you. It was torturous.”
Trapped in the desert, Claire screamed for help until her throat hurt.
A chilling realisation soon dawned on her – because she’d accidentally strayed kilometres off the track, there was little chance another hiker would stop to help.
In her rucksack was only a boiled egg, a bagel, a few litres of water, sunscreen, a map and a hiking stick.
“It was that survival instinct where you immediately switch into the mode of ‘what are my threats, what are the issues, what do I need, what are the elements and what can I do to protect myself ?’,” Claire explains.
“The thing about the survival instinct is that your brain and your body are trying to keep you alive. It will find any resource that it has to keep you going.
“And hope is such a strong one; our minds and our bodies are so
slowly dissolved into a cold blanket of stars, Claire knew she’d have to spend the night there – lonely and afraid.
Using the map and a spare T-shirt to keep herself warm, it was the first of three long, sleepless nights.
“During the first day I kept thinking ‘I’m going to get out of here today. This is going to be an ordeal.’ But then the first night came and it was so long and I started to prepare myself for the fact that the situation was dire,” Claire recalls.
After about 24 hours trapped in the barren canyon, with her resources running low, Claire could feel herself getting weaker.
When her water ran out, Claire was faced with an unimaginable decision.
“I was facing a very serious reality, and in that, I had one choice. Drink my urine and die, or don’t drink my urine and die,” Claire says.
Claire even filmed some of her ordeal on camera, in case she never made it back to her loved ones.
“I’ve started drinking my own urine, which is absolutely revolting, but … it should help me get by. I keep fantasising about an ice-cold can of Diet Coke,” she says in one video.
Another night and day passed before the alarm was raised by friends Natalie Saunders and Lou Litrenta, who realised Claire had been absent from her social media and decided to alert the authorities.
During her final hours on the rock, Claire admits she was starting to lose all hope.
“I honestly thought I was going mad. On the third day I started hearing things. And then the dehydration – I was having these very torturous, vivid hallucinations about fluids and drinks and things like that. It was awful,” she remembers.
Finally – after four days and three nights – Claire heard the sound of a helicopter above.
“When I first heard it, I was so weak at that point, I thought I had dreamed it,” she says.
“The relief was nothing
I have ever known. And I will never forget it.”
Back home, Claire needed to learn to walk again and spent time in physical rehabilitation.
Two years down the track, the brave survivor has now written a book on her horrific but life-changing experience.
“I left London to go travelling because I wanted to break away from that cycle of fear and self-doubt. And the universe was like, ‘Oh well, I’ll give you the ultimate test!’,” Claire laughs.
“Often when I’m having new and amazing experiences, I think: ‘Wow, I shouldn’t be here.’ And yet here I am, holding my book.”
• ‘Things I Learned from Falling’ by Claire Nelson, published by Hachette, is available now, RRP $29.99.
Othe tiny NSW midnorth coastal town of Kendall, a little boy in a Spider-man suit was running around his grandmother’s backyard on Benaroon Drive.
His name, of course, was William Tyrrell.
It was September 12, 2014, and at around 10.30am, 3-year-old William was playing hide-and-seek with his older sister. William was a cheeky, playful little boy and one of his favourite games was pretending to be a tiger.
As his foster mum and grandma went inside for a cup of tea, William let out one final roar, ran around the side of the house, and then … nothing.
“It had become quiet,” his mum would later say. “Too quiet.”
When William’s mother came outside only moments later, she expected to see her two young children playfully running about the backyard, but there was no sign of William.
She called out his name again and again. But there was only silence. By all accounts, he’d simply vanished off the face of the earth.
The police were called, and by 11.30am, there was an official search party combing the nearby bushland for the little boy in the Spider-man outfit.
That was nearly six long years ago – and William, who would now be 8 years old, is still missing.
No trace of the little boy – not a single hair follicle or piece of clothing – has ever been found.
Award-winning journalist and author Caroline Overington, like many of us, is fascinated and heartbroken by the story of William Tyrrell.
In her book Missing William Tyrrell, Caroline delves into the mystery and explains why Australia won’t give up until we have answers.
“This is a once-in-a-decade
crime. It just doesn’t happen. Children do not get snatched from relatively quiet streets in beautiful little villages on the Australian coast,” Caroline tells the podcast Investigates.
“People really have connected to William … he’s got this beautiful face, very recognisable to most Australians.
“How can it be that you can be playing so happily one minute, and then completely gone the next?”
William’s unfathomably mysterious disappearance frustrated everyone – from William’s foster family and biological family to detectives and the Australian public.
The lack of evidence meant there were so many possibilities and theories about what happened to him.
At first, there was hope. Maybe he had walked into the woods and just lost his way.
But that hope faded when days passed and no-one had found a little boy in a Spiderman outfit crouched under a tree, or lost in the greenery of the forest.
Next, police looked into the possibility of abduction. It was the only theory that made any sense. Could a car have quickly scooped up the toddler and zoomed off in the few seconds William’s mother was looking the other way?
“HOW CAN IT BE THAT YOU CAN BE PLAYING SO HAPPILY ONE MINUTE, AND COMPLETELY GONE THE NEXT?”
Then came the horrific theories that William had been sold into a paedophile ring. A few things gave weight to this particular idea. There were 20 registered sex offenders in close proximity to where William went missing. And in 2018, a person of interest was named. He was a convicted paedophile who was released from prison only months earlier, and lived 20 minutes from where William had disappeared.
As Caroline says, it’s almost certain that whatever happened to William, wherever he is now, it started with him being taken.
“He wasn’t found because he wasn’t lost. He was taken,” Caroline says firmly.
“He absolutely has to have been, because they have been over that area with a fine toothcomb. They used special rakes in the forensic search of the area that took place over months.”
Despite the years that have passed and the lack of clues, Caroline says there is hope William may still be alive.
“There are a number of ways he could be alive. Sometimes people snatch children because they can’t have any of their own. Sometimes people snatch children for all kinds of reasons that we may not understand,” she says.
“Time is passing. Six years is a long time, but I believe there should always be a presumption in favour of life in a missing persons case.”
In writing Missing William Tyrrell, Caroline hopes the heart-wrenching missing child case will remain at the forefront of Australian minds. Both she and William’s loved ones refuse to let it turn into a cold case.
“I feared, and I know that this is the fear of the families too, that it would come to the point that it would get sent to the cold case rooms.
“The very idea of it being a cold case sends a shiver down my spine.”
When Jerry Michael ‘Mike’ Williams went missing during a solo duck hunting trip, it was feared that the young father had been attacked and eaten by alligators.
Mike packed up his boat on December 16, 2000 for a morning out on Lake Seminole in Florida, and was due to return home hours later for a weekend anniversary trip with his wife Denise.
But Mike never made it home. His abandoned boat was found in the water and his vehicle was still parked by the shore. Investigators assumed Mike had fallen into the dark, shallow lake and drowned.
Then, after a 44-day search, it was speculated the 31-yearold had been mauled and eaten by alligators, common predators in Lake Seminole.
Search parties combed the lake and turned up nothing – however several items belonging to Mike were found over the following months.
His jacket, waders and hunting licence were discovered in the depths of the murky lake water, but no body.
This further pointed to the alligator theory. But one person refused to believe that Mike’s death was an accident.
His mother, Cheryl Williams, launched her own inquiry into the disappearance.
When investigators didn’t take her seriously, Cheryl compiled a meticulous 27-page case file looking into evidence.
She contacted wildlife experts, who told her alligators did not feed during the winter months.
“She was absolutely possessed with finding this out, what had happened to Mike,” said friend Patti Ketcham in 2018. “He didn’t just fall out of the boat. This wasn’t just a hunting accident.”
Cheryl’s suspicions only grew in 2001, when Mike’s widow Denise collected $2.65 million in life insurance from a policy written by Brian Winchester, Mike’s best friend.
Then in 2005, an unexpected turn of events shocked everyone who knew and loved Mike.
Brian divorced his wife Katherine and married his best friend Mike’s widow: Denise.
No-one knew at the time, but Denise and Brian had been hiding a secret affair for more than eight years.
It started in 1997 at a concert, where they kissed while their respective spouses were parking the cars.
That stolen kiss triggered 21 years of sex, lies and deceit.
However, Brian and Denise’s romance was not to last. They separated in 2012 and Denise eventually filed for divorce in 2015. The following year, Brian was arrested for kidnapping, after he ambushed Denise in her car and held her at gunpoint, begging her to reconsider. In 2017, he was sentenced to 20 years jail.
However, authorities didn’t just have their eyes on Brian.
Police took the opportunity to press Denise on the stillunsolved disappearance of her first husband, Mike.
“THAT STOLEN KISS TRIGGERED 17 YEARS OF SEX, LIES AND DECEIT”
“I’m not comfortable talking about that right now,” she told officers. Little did she know her ex-husband Brian was accepting an immunity deal with police in exchange for information on Mike’s whereabouts.
It was then the details of a murder plot kept hidden for 17 years began to unravel.
Brian admitted to police he and Denise had been having an affair since 1997 and were desperate to be together.
But Denise was reluctant to file for divorce from Mike, citing a desire not to share custody of their daughter Anslee. Instead, they devised a cold-blooded murder plot to get rid of Mike once and for all.
No-one knew that Brian had actually joined Mike on his ill-fated duck hunting trip in 2000. When the boat was in the middle of the lake, Brian pushed an unsuspecting Mike straight into the swampy water.
But the murder didn’t go to plan. Floundering in the lake, Mike managed to cling to a tree stump.
Brian circled Mike in the boat, loaded his shotgun and fired it at his best friend’s face, killing him instantly.
Worried the scene could no longer be staged as a drowning, Brian drove his friend’s body to the edge of another nearby lake and buried it there.
It was a chilling tale of the ultimate betrayal.
Brian led law enforcement to the body of Jerry Michael Williams in October 2017 after his arrest, where it had lain in a watery grave for 17 years.
For her role in her husband’s death, Denise was convicted of first-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison. Brian was granted immunity in exchange for testifying against his ex-wife.
And so ended the 17-year mystery of a poisonous love triangle that went terribly wrong.
“For the rest of my life, when I try to sleep at night I will see my son clinging to a tree stump in Lake Seminole in the dark,” Cheryl said tearfully in court.
“Knowing that his best friend is trying to kill him, I hear his voice screaming for help. I wasn’t there to help him. It will haunt me forever.”