The very name of Nine’s stalwart travel series, now in its 30th season, may seem like a taunt to those with itchy feet, unsure of when they’ll be able to confidently pack their suitcases for an interstate trip, let alone an overseas jaunt. But as LA-based Getaway presenter Jason Dundas points out, big travel requires big planning. What better time, in the midst of a pandemic, to squirrel away and daydream about the next adventure beyond our shores?

“Most people don’t see a destination like Singapore or New York and go, ‘I’m going to go tomorrow!’. They go, ‘Let’s go in 2022. Let’s start saving our money’. Because, let’s face it, it costs a bloody fortune to go on a real holiday.”

Having walked into the job in 2006 when he was an MTV host from Sydney’s northern beaches, looking “like a homeless hipster” in fuchsia pink thongs, ripped jeans and a “mop hairdo”, hired on the spot by then Nine CEO Eddie McGuire, Dundas spent the next two years on a continuous working holiday. In 2008 he relocated to the US become the show’s Northern Hemisphere stringer. His has been a life of travel, “the worst for a relationship,” but a culturally enriching experience he is “indebted to forever”.

Along with archival footage from the show’s most popular destinations over the years, this season includes Dundas’ segments on Boston, Singapore and the skiing scene in Park City, Utah. He considers his all-time Getaway highlight a three-day trek with his dad through the Himalayas for a 2009 Father’s Day special. The Carnival in Rio de Janeiro comes a close second.

“In Brazil, there’s a huge divide between the upper and lower classes and all the hills are filled with poverty. When the carnival is on, all the people from the hills come down to the beach and get tanned and then they join the wealthy people out in the streets for 10 days, dancing to the samba beat. It’s the most free-spirited energetic atmosphere you’ll ever experience in your life. No one really cares about anything except just being alive to the max.”

It’s a world away from his first gig, camping in Byron Bay, and trying to heed the advice of his producer not to use MTV-friendly words like “sick” to describe the location.

“I got to take one of my best friends and the two of us went up there and stayed in a caravan park and basically went surfing and did a review of the campervan. It sounds so trivial but it was a big deal.”

Unlike those who would bemoan the transformation of Byron Bay from a sleepy seaside village into the celebrity hotspot it has become, Netflix’s upcoming reality series, Byron Baes sealing the town’s reputation as an Insta-paradise, Dundas, who grew up holidaying with his family in the area, is all for progress.