GETAWAY may count as one of the most glamorous gigs on TV, following its good-looking hosts as they travel from one hot spot to another.
But as the Channel 9 series celebrates 25 years on air, long-serving presenters Catriona Rowntree, David Reyne and Jason Dundas have revealed a rather different reality.
Before 60 Minutes found itself in a Beirut jail, it seems one Getaway crew had their passports confiscated before being locked up in Indonesia - just one of the horror stories News Corp can now reveal.
Presenting the show for 21 years, Rowntree recalled a trip to Bali in her early days, when her crew were detained in a local prison, for reasons which remain unclear.
“The crew had their passports confiscated and the boys had to spend time in a jail cell before our fixer sorted things out,” she said, sharing a catalogue of near-miss incidents.
Clearly toughened as a fulltime travel reporter, Rowntree claimed she’d been mugged “a couple of times” and detailed one incident in a Malaysian shopping centre which saw her handbag cut from her body by a knife-wielding assailant.
She was also tear-gassed while trekking “the nativity trail” from Nazareth to Bethlehem approximately 15 years ago.
“I remember having to jump into the car and my sound guy going, ‘just drive!’ and just having to put my foot on the accelerator, all of us with stinging eyes,” she said.
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Their car was stoned on the same assignment, after they were inadvertently became entangled in the region’s violent local politics.
While Rowntree’s resilience is admirable, Jason Dundas, who joined the show in 2006, admitted his bravery pales by comparison.
“There’s an ongoing joke that I’m the most scaredy-cat person out of any of the presenters. I once was seen running from a chicken in Fiji -- it chased me,” he laughed.
The feisty bird was nothing compared to a darkened boat ride down an Amazonian river.
“As the sun was setting the guide said to us, ‘this area is renowned for the biggest anacondas and we recently saw one here, 30-foot plus.’
And as he warned his passengers “the motor conked out,” said Dundas.
“We had to paddle with oars a foot from the water in the most anaconda-infested area of the Amazon for an hour, in pure darkness, back to our boat. We all thought we were going to die.”
However, David Reyne (who launched the program in 1992 and has returned as a host on-and-off since) shared the strangest anecdote.
In the seaside town of Sevastapol, Ukraine, Reyne was invited to experience “the charms of a Ukrainian-style spa treatment.”
He remembers being “strapped into a chair” while an “ample-breasted woman,” wearing army-boots and a discoloured lab coat, arrived and went to work.
“She pulled out this kind of wand thing that was plugged into a dodgy switch on the wall somewhere. She flicked the switch and suddenly it was glowing like yellow cake. Then she inserted it up my nose,” he said.
Decades later, Reyne is still bewildered by the procedure but jokingly suspects he may “have been the unwitting receptacle of a nuclear fuel rod,” adding, “sometimes I’m accused of glowing in the dark.”
Despite their “life and death experiences,” Rowntree said there’s a reason presenters and crew keep returning to the travelogue year after year.
“We’ve all got the funniest stories to tell and we’ve all gone through thick and thin together and years later we’re still friends,” she said.
* Getaway airs Saturday at 5.30pm on Channel 9.
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