When you’re trekking, climbing, balancing, and swinging your way through 180 kilometres of tough terrain to reach 2400 metres in New Zealand’s South Island, the tears will flow, naturally.
But what’s essential for any great physical and mental endeavour is a great soundtrack, which is where Tiffani Wood comes in. As a former member of Aussie girlband, Bardot, the 46-year-old has some pipes on her – and while it’s easy to picture her spinning around on a mountain top Sound of Music style, Wood’s journey on The Summit was more cathartic than theatrical.
As a mother of six, Wood has put her career, and life, on the backburner for more than a decade. Now, she’s reclaiming her sense of self, one treacherous step at a time. “I thought, you know what? I don’t care anymore. I just want to do something for me.”
Competing on the reality show was also the perfect excuse to escape the “mundane, Groundhog Day of mum life”, Wood tells WHO from her Gold Coast home. “I was in a rut … and wanted to do something for myself. I heard the mountain calling and off I went.”
Wood hasn’t been in the public eye since 2010 when she forfeited her music career to become a single mum to her first child. “It’s funny isn’t it,” Wood muses, “when you’re in the public eye and then you just disappear … I left the big smoke and moved to the Gold Coast. Then I met my current partner, which is where the other five little gremlins came from,” she laughs.
“My littlest just turned 5 when I went on The Summit, so I thought they were all old enough to cope without me being here.” What Wood didn’t expect was how cathartic the whole experience would be.
“I didn’t realise I’d cry so much,” the ‘Poison’ singer laughs. “I cried the whole time, it was like therapy in front of the nation. I’ve never done therapy and I probably should have before going on the show.” Funnily enough, it was the tears that made it “the best time of my life, full stop”. That, and the people, she says. “Everyone was amazing on there, all the contestants.
We all got along well,” she admits, telling WHO she formed a strong friendship with another mum, Trish, during filming. Trish reminded Wood of her Bardot bandmate, Sophie Monk, who she still keeps in touch with 25 years after the girls got together on the reality TV series, Popstars.
Wood has so many stories from her time on the show, some she might even share in a book one day, like her other bandmate and good friend, Belinda Chapple, did in 2023.
“I actually said to her that I’m going to write a book. It’s funny, because when I talk to the girls, every single one of us has a different story to tell. It’s like the other people didn’t exist in your own mind,” she admits.
“We came out of it with different experiences. It’s not that her story isn’t true, it’s just that we have a different perspective and came out of it differently.”
Until she puts pen to paper, she’ll happily watch herself climb that mountain on The Summit with her ‘little gremlins’.
(The Summit airs Mon. – Wed. at 7.30pm on Channel 9 and 9Now)
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