THE WOMEN OF WANDIN VALLEY
Forty-one years on, the friendships and bonds remain strong for these A Country Practice icons, who are now on different paths
Their beaming smiles give more than a hint of just how incredibly close the stars of A Country Practice remain, even almost three decades after we said farewell to the popular characters from Wandin Valley.
“It’s a lovely photo, isn’t it,” actor Di Smith tells Woman’s Day. Di, 64, who played Dr Alex Fraser, says it was just magical when she finally got to reunite with the gorgeous women she met through ACP for a long overdue lunch in Sydney with actresses Anne Tenney, Kate Raison, Jo Mitchell and Georgie Parker last week.
She says it was Georgie, 57, who wanted to post a photo on Instagram to share the love with the millions of fans who grew up watching the hit Aussie drama, sharing in the trials and tribulations that made it compulsory viewing from 1981 to 1994.
And it’s clear from Georgie’s joyful selfie just how much of a bond remains between these five TV stars.
“We’re all bound together by this thing – A Country Practice. We’ve all had several TV series since then but the common denominator is being part of that wonderful cast,” Di says, laughing about how ill-prepared they all were for an impromptu photoshoot.
LIVES CHANGED
“George said, ‘Can we have a picture?’ That’s Georgie, of course, going ‘I’ll just take a photo and if we all like it, can I put it up on Insta?’ She’s fabulous and I just adore her, but I’d just washed my hair, and pulled it back!”
The last thing these fantastic women were worried about was how they looked on the day when they shared plenty of laughs as they reminisced about the show that changed their lives forever, and made lifelong friends of them all.
Di says the reunion came about after the funeral of the show’s matriarch, Lorrae Desmond, who died in May last year, aged 91, but will forever be remembered as Wandin Valley’s kind, caring and at times kooky Shirley Gilroy.
“We see each other at various times, accidentally or on purpose, and I think what happened was that we had Lorrae’s funeral and all kind of looked at each other and thought we should all get together, and not at another funeral,” she says.
The women had the same response after the 2018 death of much-loved actress Penny Cook, who played the show’s vet Vicky Dean Bowen from 1981 to 1985. She passed away at just 61, and it “completely broke all our hearts”, says Di.
NEW PATHS
“We thought we really like each other and should see each other more often. Then COVID happened. We tried to organise lunch, then we all got locked down for two years,” she explains.
Their lunch in Sydney two weeks ago proved to be worth the wait with Di revealing that it was simply joyful to catch up on simple things like what their kids and partners were doing, on top of what each of them were now doing professionally.
“We’re all still in the industry but we all do really different things,” says Di, who has just finished a successful run of a play called In This Light at the Flight Path Theatre, which she produced rather than starred in. She will be touring her production of Wild Thing in NSW next year.
Anne, 68, who starred as Molly Jones opposite real-life husband Shane Withington, 64 (who played deputy matron of Wandin Valley Hospital Brendan Jones) has just been confirmed to play Ma Singer in the Sydney Theatre production of Oil.
And Kate, 60, who portrayed Parks and Wildlife officer Cathy Hayden, has also kept treading the boards, appearing in a production of Will Arbery’s Pulitzer nominated play Heroes Of The Fourth Turning at the Seymour Centre last year.
Georgie, who played nurse Lucy Gardiner on the show and now stars as Roo Stewart in Home And Away, remains one of the most popular actresses on TV, while 57-year-old Jo, who played Wandin Valley sweetheart Jo Loveday, is now a writer.
“It’s an interesting dynamic because Jo and I were on set together for three years, Georgie and Kate started when I was there, and while Annie and I never worked together, we were at NIDA together,” says Di. “Again, it’s about the magic that surrounds A Country Practice.”