Who has left The Traitors Australia 2026? Every murder and banishment so far

Shane Gould’s plan to save her own skin and push out Cam Merchant backfired at the first round table.

The Olympic swimmer, 69, came under questioning during the first grilling, despite being a Faithful.

Ian “Dicko” Dickson had rallied his alliance, whom he’s humorously named “LSD” for “Loyalty, Secrecy, Discipline”, to target her and successfully voted her out in round one.

However, the group was disappointed to learn she was actually a Faithful, leaving the Traitors to live on for another day.

Speaking exclusively to New Idea, Shane admits she was “devastated” to leave the show, and didn’t realise it would be her until the votes were revealed.

“At the round table, when there were about four or five votes, I thought, oh, I didn’t read this right,” she tells us.

“There were a lot of conversations and people had their say, you know, saying why they picked my name.”

“And I thought, ‘Oh, am I like that? And did they read me like that?’ But ultimately it was, ‘Shane, you didn’t tell us that you won Survivor’.”

“I just thought, well, it’s got nothing to do with this game. This game is a different game. It’s a different premise.”

“It’s years later. Let’s just play the game for what it is now, not from the people in their past experiences.”

Shane says she felt she was targeted because she won Australian Survivor in 2018, with the key drama with Cam only adding to suspicion.

So, does she regret voting Cam out instead of going home herself?

“I hope [Cam will return],” she says, conceding she could have set herself up for a comeback if she’d left instead.

“It all happens so quickly, and you’ve got to make really quick decisions.”

“A lot of those reality TV shows, some of them aren’t really real, but Traitors and Survivor that I’ve played, they’re about as real as you can get.”

“It’s a compression of life, and often you have to make hard decisions in critical situations.”

“So it was hard, and sometimes we make the wrong decision.”

Shane was wrongly pegged as a Traitor, but she was no wiser about their identities, steadfastly believing Rhys Nicholson was a Traitor because of his confidence.

Watching the show back, she says Traitor Kirby is the person who surprised her the most, saying she thinks she’s got what it takes to win the series.

While Shane’s Traitors journey didn’t go as she’d hoped, she says she still learnt valuable life lessons that she will take with her when she turns 70 in November.

Kween Kong was the first celebrity to be banished from the castle, with Traitors Alex, Kirby and Alvin making her their first murder victim.

The drag queen had caused a stir by claiming that she heard the vinyl of Kirby’s jacket rustle during the Traitors’ selection, risking her being exposed early.

However, Kirby had not been told the rumours, putting her in a safe position to murder Kween without coming under suspicion from the Faithfuls.

Kween’s murder caused a huge stir in the castle, but Kirby managed to survive the first round table, with the backing of Dicko’s alliance LSD.

Speaking to New Idea, Kween admits she knew she was going to be an early target after Kirby asked her if she’d heard her trying to take her jacket off – which was a white lie, of course.

“She knew, and I knew she knew,” Kween tells us.

“My ears are sensitive, but also I literally thought there would have been like some music because we could hear everything!”

“I could hear footsteps; I knew exactly where Gretel was. You could hear ‘boom, boom, boom’. And then the [rustle] sound [of Kirby’s jacket].”

“That’s why I went to Rhys, but Alvin was there, and I didn’t realise Alvin was there because he’s a quiet little assassin!”

Despite that, Kween has no regrets and doesn’t think she could have played it any better, even if that meant her early demise.

She insists the Traitors were right to kill her off, given she had already pegged both Kirby and Alex as Traitors and says her entrance at breakfast in full drag would have won everyone over.

However, Kween admits she had thought to try and bargain and make a deal with Kirby for her own safety, or been picked as a Traitor to begin with!

“I think it is such a missed opportunity by Channel 10 and by Gretel to not choose me as a Traitor because that would have been amazing,” she says.

“No one would have picked it. I would have had a lot more fun, I think.”

As for her first victim? It’s no surprise to hear Kween would have killed off Kirby first.

“Kirby’s the biggest competition, and I definitely feel like Kirby’s got what it takes [to win],” Kween teases.

Cam Merchant was the first celebrity to go home, getting evicted before he even set foot in the castle.

His journey was devastatingly cut short when Shane was given the choice to go home herself, or send someone else home.

Shane decided to boot Cam from the competition, in a twist that Cam said he saw coming a mile off.

“My heart sank, and my gut dropped straight away. I just had this feeling,” he told New Idea.

“I had this really bizarre feeling straight away that that’s what was gonna happen.”

While Shane insists her choice was completely “random”, Cam said he had made peace with his departure.

But, in a Traitors-style twist, could he be lining up a secret return? He’s not giving anything away.

“Friends called me, and they’re like, ‘Oh, mate, I’m seeing you everywhere’. And they’re like, ‘I believe that you win’,” he said.

“They’re like, ‘You win it. I know you win it’. ‘Why would you think that?’ I said, and [they said] ‘You told us this story, and I don’t believe it, but I reckon you do’. I’m like, ‘Yeah, mate, go with that then, go with that’.”

We will have to wait and see.