Kate Ritchie reveals a little known secret about a favourite TV home.
Kate Ritchie this week revealed the house originally used for Home & Away exteriors (which was detroyed by a bushfire in 2002), was home to a secret tunnel.
Speaking on Nova’s Fitzy, Wippa & Kate she said:
Kate: It [The Summer Bay House] existed for years in in Kenthurst in New South Wales, and then in the big fires that swept through the Northern Beaches area of Sydney back in the 90s or early 2000s the house burned to the ground.
Wippa: So Kate, this is a serious question on Home and Away. You know, if you walk through the front door of the main house, is that a set, or is that a house?
Kate: Well it depends whether you see the outside or the inside, that’s a set. That’s a complete set…the stairwell and all the upstairs bedroom, that’s a set…but the outside is a real house. Do you know what they used to make me do? If I had to start the scene coming out of the house on location…the house was quite scary inside and I’d have to go and wait and stand inside the door and wait for ‘action’ and they’d have someone stand there with me, because I would get so scared.
Fitzy: Oooh someone knocking on the basement door.
Kate: Actually how about this…there is a tunnel, a tunnel from inside…if you go down the front stairs of the Summer Bay House, that you would see on the opening titles, and right down the rocks, off to the right there’s a cave and I went in there once with some of the crew members to have a look, because there is a tunnel from that cave up into the house.
Photo: Back to the Bay