They’ve been besties since week one of The Block Australia, but cracks are starting to show in Leah Milton and Kristy Beames’ friendship.
After a heated confrontation in which Kristy accuses sisters Eliza and Liberty Paschke of being network “plants”, Leah, 32, decides she doesn’t want to look “guilty by association” and starts to step back from what appeared to be a watertight bond.
Explains Brisbane first-aid trainer Leah, “I felt physically uncomfortable. I started to realise there are more layers to Kristy and that maybe it’s all gone a bit too far.”
Adelaide project manager Kristy, 34, on the other hand, feels Leah has played just as much a part and is backpedalling merely to “save her image”.
Couples Ash and Leah (left) and Kristy and Brett thrash it out.
Of Leah’s apparent change of heart, she says, “I felt betrayed. There were a lot of upsetting things between Leah and other contestants in the first few weeks that I had nothing to do with.”
Things come to a head after a boozy post-challenge party, where Leah becomes the target of what she calls Kristy’s “nasty” tactics and she’s “verbally attacked”.
Leah says, “I’ve never been spoken to like that by a friend in my life. If you’re on Kristy’s side, life is great, but the second you’re in her firing line, you’re done for.”
Shockingly, Eliza, 37, claims things got so out of hand that Kristy and her husband Brett, 34, made the Block‘s crew cry!
“When you’re telling people to get stuffed, when you’re not treating people with respect, when tradies don’t want to work with you and when you’re making crew cry, it really tends to flick people away,” the Melbourne personal assistant tells Woman’s Day. “They would kick, scream and yell. It wasn’t a very nice environment to be in.”
Leah’s finding the fighting too much.
This leads Leah to rethink her close friendship with Kristy. The mum-of-three says, “Our interactions with Brett and Kristy felt light-hearted at the beginning. Admittedly, some of their comments felt a little off, but I still thought it must be them joking, so we would have a chuckle.
“It wasn’t until they kept going on about the ‘industry plant’ and the way they would talk about the girls that it started feeling really icky. I soon realised this wasn’t a joke to them any more and it was way more serious than I had originally realised.”
“It got to the point where their opinions had crossed the line and I started to reflect on everything. It was simply a disconnect. It was a sad and hard realisation for us. First and foremost, I’m a mother. I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t stand up for what I thought was right because that’s what I teach my kids.”
In the wake of the party, Leah and her builder husband Ash, 38, decide Kristy and safety advisor Brett’s morals don’t align with theirs, and they confront them about the things they’ve said and done.
Kristy alleges she’s being made a “scapegoat” and that Leah changing her tune isn’t about her children, but for the cameras. “There are two sides to Leah,” Kristy declares. “I won’t be sad about the loss of our friendship because you can’t grieve the loss of someone you never knew.”
