Forty years ago, some plucky kids with broad accents rode their bikes around a quintessentially Australian cul-de-sac, lined with postwar houses that could have been any of ours. A catchy tune promised that, if we were there for one another, we could become good friends with the people next door. But now it’s over.
Neighbours has a habit of ending. After it was axed in 1985 by its first Australian broadcaster, Channel Seven, the network even destroyed the sets to make sure it was truly gone. We have, more than once, grieved the end of a community so tightknit that the school principal is also your estranged dad’s ex-wife’s former fake-son-in-law’s surrogate mother.
