It is a classic tale of if at first you don't succeed, try, try again.
Of making your own opportunities.
And yet another example of the New Zealand television industry not recognising talent when it is right in front of it.
Hanton and Andersen filmed the seventh instalment of their television series, Julian and Camilla's World Odyssey, in Kenya.
The pair are based in London, along with their crew cameraman Tom Fowlie and researcher and soundman Ian Hart, but hail from New Zealand.
The team, plus their unofficial fifth member editor Justin Hawkes, all attended Auckland's South Seas Film School together in 1998.
Travel Channel director of broadcasting Steve Fright says the series has gone down very well with its audience.
"One of our viewers was so taken with the series that he named one of his chickens after [Camilla]. Is there any higher honour?"
But while the honours and accolades flow easily now, the path to success has been a somewhat gruelling uphill struggle littered with rejection, near-poverty and bedbugs.
The story begins in 2002 when Hanton approached Andersen to make a travel show.
The pair had worked together earlier on a short film and the idea was for Hanton to direct while Andersen produced, with both of them appearing on camera as presenters.
Realising no-one would pay the unproven team to make a television series, the friends, along with Hart and Fowlie, went unpaid throughout the year-long shoot, which saw them travel to 11 countries on three continents.
A private investor fronted up the cash for travel expenses and equipment but it was very much an exercise in restraint, says Hart.
"Julian and I shared a room for most of the year.
We were allowed our own rooms in each capital city.
That was some strange, random rule Camilla came up with," he laughs.
"To stop me and Julian from killing each other, mainly."
The original idea, spawned by Hanton's travels through India, was to make an economy travel programme that showed viewers how they could see the world on just $100 a week.
Andersen recalls: "Initially we were like, 'OK, let's go make a travel show and let's show people you can do this and have a good time'. We soon found there was a lot more interesting stuff than trying to travel cheaply and it ended up being, 'Oh wow, look at all these crazy sub-cultures we're finding'. Each episode started to have a theme to it."
The team soon ditched its original idea and instead began investigating the political climate of the countries they visited, the effects of mass tourism and other less-visited subjects.
By the end of the first series, they had interviewed the prominent linguist, philosopher and political activist Noam Chomsky and scored an audience with Mexico's elusive Zapatista revolutionaries.
At the same time, they featured the familiar perils of backpacking, like Delhi belly and bedbugs.
And getting drunk at a full moon party in Thailand.
Getaway it wasn't.
And Hanton and Andersen are certainly no Charlotte Dawson or Clarke Gayford.
"We just started being ourselves, because we couldn't be anything else.
We couldn't be that polished presenter and the show became a very honest opinion of everywhere we were," says Andersen.
Hart puts it a little more bluntly.
"We started to do pieces to camera and Julian and Camilla were terrible at it. They were really awful. It just felt really forced and horrible. So it was a decision made early on, 'Look, you guys can't do that. You can't pull it off. You're not that, so let's not do it'."
That approach resulted in a series unlike anything else on television.
And it was its uniqueness which, eventually, saw the team signed to work with the Travel Channel in 2008.
The network loved the pair's unusual, often fraught, chemistry.
One episode, filmed in Cuba, saw the two presenters have a full-blown row, exchanging heated four-letter words all caught on camera and included in the final cut.
But New Zealand was less willing to embrace the pair's take on the travel genre.
On their return in 2003 and after a year spent editing the series - they had returned with more than 350 hours of footage - the team set about trying to sell their series to Television New Zealand.
What happened next is open to speculation.
Andersen says she offered the series to TVNZ and was told they did not buy finished local productions, only commissioned them.
They were not put in contact with the acquisitions department - a fact confirmed by TVNZ, which says their acquisitions department has no record of being offered the programme.
Undeterred, the team battled on and managed to secure an American distributor, who took the series to an international television market in France.
Where, somewhat curiously, TVNZ ended up buying the series, months after turning it down.
The series finally made it to air in late 2005, but found itself stuck in one of the worst times possible - 1pm on a Thursday on TV1 - described by one television reviewer as a "ghetto timeslot".
The series did get a second screening, the following year, relegated to an equally unpalatable midnight timeslot, before the Documentary Channel purchased the rights and made it prime-time viewing.
It was a difficult time for the young film-makers.
Hart remembers the sinking feeling when TVNZ first rejected the series, thinking that was end of it.
"I just thought, 'Oh no. If New Zealand doesn't buy it, who will?'."
Fortunately, the series found life outside New Zealand.
A French cable network was the first to buy all 11 episodes of the first series, before it was sold to a further 18 territories, eventually earning enough money to pay back their private investor in full.
By that stage, the four friends had parted company.
Hanton moved to London, where he started his own small production company, making internet video content for Channel 4.
Andersen and Fowlie returned to New Zealand, where she produced a children's series for Maori Television and worked in concert promotion and music sponsorship, while he worked as a freelance cameraman.
Wanderers world famous, but not in NZ > From Page 1No Getaway ...
Julian and Camilla's World Odyssey presenters Camilla Andersen and Julian Hanton.
PHOTO:SKY TELEVISIONHart moved between the two hemispheres, making music videos including 2008's New Zealand Music Awards' winning entry for The Brunettes' Her Hairagami Set and researching series, such as Rocked the Nation.
It was only after the Travel Channel approached them in 2008 - five years after the original series - they even considered regrouping for another Odyssey.
"When we finished the first series, we said, `Never! Never again!'," laughs Andersen.
"And it took five years for us to actually agree, `Yes, again,' because of the intensity of the first one."
But the lure of travel and a budget big enough to pay themselves proved too tempting and the four reunited, signing on to make seven episodes.
The Travel Channel was so happy with their work, they extended the series and commissioned a further six episodes before the first batch was officially delivered.
Hanton says the network's support has been incredible - and highly unusual.
"Usually if you get a show commissioned, the chief exec' or head of production or whoever will guide you through and want to see what you're doing every step of the way.
They want to see a script, they want to see what you're doing."
But the Travel Channel just leaves the team to it.
"They say they don't want to meddle in what we do.
They never want any changes, they're always like, `Oh that's perfect, we love what you've made'.
There's never any structural changes or `Cut that out' which usually stations go nuts over.
The recognition really comes from the fact they let us do what we want."
Armed with Travel Channel money and the support of various tourism boards, the series has changed tack from its original course.
As the team producing it has matured, so too has the show itself.
No longer relegated to dodgy backpacker hostels and dilapidated buses, the film-makers agree the new series looks more professional than the original.
But it is still a far cry from the slick, promo-heavy efforts of other TV travel shows.
Equipped with radio microphones, the presenters are free to roam the streets and chat to whoever takes their fancy - regularly leading to unusual, often farcical, situations.
"That's what people like about the show and that's what we like," says Hanton.
"You never know where it's going to take you or the crazy people whom you'll meet. We just follow our nose and see where it takes us."
Julian and Camilla's World Odyssey screens on the Travel Channel (Sky digital 77) on Fridays at 9pm, Saturdays at 3am, 9am, 3pm and 11pm, and Sundays at 5am and 5pm.
