MAYR OUT ON A LIMB IN EXCITING HOST ROLE
HE’S spent the past months swimming in shark-infested waters and grappling with killer cactus, but it was a more mundane encounter with a skateboard that finally claimed TV traveller Tyson Mayr.
The Miami local was nursing a freshly fractured wrist at the announcement of his latest hosting role, a new digital series for National Geographic called Only in Oz.
An I’m a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here! contestant accustomed to roughing it, filming has taken Mayr from the Top End where he joined the North West Mobile Force patrolling more than a million square kilometres of rugged bushland for smugglers and illegal fishermen to extreme tuna fishing in Port Lincoln.
“I got to travel all over Australia to places I didn’t even know the name of and it’s rekindled my passion to explore our backyard,” he said.
“I find the most comfort when I’m out of my comfort zone, so that’s what’s great about this show.”
While Mayr’s The Naked Traveller channels no doubt spark plenty of envy, he admits he’s wary of social media.
“I try to avoid social media – it’s not healthy when you find yourself wasting all this time looking at everyone else’s fake life,” he said. “This app (National Geographic, which screens Only in Oz) is probably my favourite because it’s a fun place you can pick up your phone and go and actually learn something.”
Mayr spends more than half of the year overseas travelling, but home is now officially where the heart is.
“I’ve just bought my own place at Miami,” he said.
“My family and my sisters are here and I get to go and help Dad out on the farm picking pumpkins – with a fractured wrist.”
Mayr also hints at a “major, really exciting” new project in the works, with details to be unveiled in coming weeks.