WHY I HAVE FOUND MYSELF WATCHING HOME AND AWAY.

Okay, I admit it. The summer period has seen me watching The Force: Behind The Line, as a factual police show, and I have seen advertisements for Home and Away, and once I’d seen all the shows, my curiosity got the better of me and I watched Home and Away.

Home and Away premiered at a tumultuous time in my life. It was one week before school resumed, which I wasn’t ready for, as I’d had five weeks of a six-week summer holiday that was anything but relaxing, and I needed some escape from the stress of the bullying at school, so I watched it.

The show has evolved from Tom and Pippa Fletcher and their five foster kids, and their management of the local caravan park. Tom Fletcher died in 1990, and the children moved on, and the only original cast member is Alf Stewart, played by Ray Meagher. Yes, his daughter, Ruth (Roo) is still there, but she’s now played by Georgie Parker, rather than the original Justine Clark.

I am unsure as to whether this will be regular viewing or just until a particular storyline is resolved, but some of the cast members have been in other shows that were a source of escapism in my youth, such as Shane Withington, who plays John Palmer, and who had played Brendan Jones in A Country Practice.

Revisiting Home and Away has also provided an analogy as to why I detest conservative politicians. If Home and Away was still a show that was centred around an old caravan park and Summer Bay high school, it would have lost viewer interest. And let’s not forget, the character of Donald Fisher, played by Normal Coburn, left the series over 20 years ago. So, the show had to evolve to become something that would keep viewer interest.

You can’t get a country back on track by reverting to how it was when a particular government left office, any more so than what you could if you asked Norman Coburn if he wanted to reprise his role as Donald Fisher, other than for a few guest appearances. A country has to evolve.