The Block Glasshouse contestants Max and Karstan visited Petrie's Mitre 10 in Bathurst yesterday

The couple of eight years – who make up one of five teams competing in The Block – made a visit to Petrie’s Mitre 10 in Bathurst yesterday.

While the crowd was small, there was a lot of interest in the couple and their behind-the-scenes gossip from the hit show.

With cameras trained on contestants so regularly, there are a few tricks to avoid having your dirty laundry aired.

“If you need to talk, do it at night when the cameras aren’t around,” Max said.

“We’ve never really had a fight in the eight or nine years we’ve been together. Getting into a kombi and travelling around Australia is more stressful,” Karstan said of a previous holiday they spent together.

One question from the crowd concerned recent allegations in the show that Max and Karstan had cheated.

After other contestants made the allegations, The Block’s host Scott Cam called for an audit of everyone’s finances.

“In the end we owed about $800. We didn’t realise and we paid it straight away,” Max said.

The couple applied to be contestants many months before they were accepted. They said they were among 30,000 entrants.

“It’s a money-can’t-buy experience. You learn a lot about yourself – there’s extreme highs and extreme lows,” Karstan said.

“That first night was ridiculous. We were camping inside under the office desk and there was a little mouse running around.”

Lithgow-born Karstan, who studied at The Scots School at Bathurst, took the opportunity to attend his 10-year school reunion while in town for the weekend.

Novocastrian Max said the couple met when Karstan moved to Newcastle.