It’s always hard to farewell old friends
CONFESSION: I didn’t really watch Neighbours growing up. I was more a Summer Bay girl.
Of course, that’s likely due to growing up in Whyalla. Yes, we had TVs – colour, even. And, yes, electricity, too – as you funny folks who’ve only ever lived in the Big Smoke like to tease. But we only had two channels: The ABC and Channel 4, which was a mishmash of various networks but largely Channel 7. So Neighbours wasn’t even on my childhood TV.
Its stars, however, were on my bedroom walls. Jason Donovan (sigh) was there mixed in with my other fave teen heart-throbs. I sang my little 14-year-old heart out to Angry Anderson’s Suddenly, which was the soundtrack to Donovan’s Scott Robinson and Kylie Minogue’s Charlene
Ramsay. All the while pining for my own true love.
I came to the iconic soap late. But I was totally swept up in the Dr Karl, Susan and Izzy love triangle. (You’d have thought he would have learnt from The Slap Heard Around The World – not The Will Smith one, but rather when Susan slapped her philandering husband the first time he strayed.)
As my children grew, and my
own TV time shrunk, Neighbours and I became mere acquaintances rather than the good friends we once were. And that was seemingly replicated across Australia as Ten moved the soap to its offshoot channel 10Peach in 2011. While it still rates its socks off in the UK with almost one million dedicated fans regularly tuning in, back home only some 170,000 metro viewers watched the goings on in Erinsborough.
And so it was with a heavy heart in March, even as absent friends, we learned this institution – and its almost 9000 episodes – would come to an end, as Fremantle’s UK broadcast partner called time on the soap. I’ve been privileged to visit the sprawling Nunawading set a few times. Each time marvelling at the vastness of the operations.
The massive backlot is a magnificent sight for any TV fan to behold. Last Wednesday I was back there, before the curtain falls for the last time, as stars past and present were given a final press parade.
There was joy, as old favourites Ryan Moloney (Toadie), Alan Fletcher (Dr Karl), Jackie Woodburne (Susan) and the only actor to have been there on the very first and last day of filming, Stefan Dennis (Paul Robinson), mingled with the stars of today, such as Georgie Stone, who wrote to the production in 2018 making a case for a storyline for a trans character based on her own experiences, and was given the part.
Just like any last day on the job, there were jokes and fond memories, but also melancholy as we celebrated the talented actors who face somewhat uncertain futures.
For almost 40 years we have virtually lived next door to the Ramsays, Robinsons, Kennedys, Rebecchis and the other families
Don’t be sad that it’s ended, be grateful that it ever was
who’ve come and gone on the fictional cul-de-sac – so it’s no surprise it hurts a little to say goodbye.
As long-running executive producer Jason Herbison said to me at the event: “Don’t be sad that it’s ended, be grateful that it ever was.”
NEIGHBOURS FINALE, JULY 28, 7.30PM, TEN