And there I was … sobbing at a wedding dress in a museum in Hobart, Tasmania. I hate weddings. By all means, plan your big day, create your mood board and do the princess thing. I was married in a five-minute ceremony, wearing a Stetson, before heading to the pub. Fancy nuptials leave me cold. This wasn’t just any wedding outfit, though. This was the meringue that I believe sealed my destiny.
It was Charlene’s wedding dress from Neighbours. Backlit and plumped up in a corner while the classic Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan episode played in the background. The object of my pilgrimage, resplendent in all its glory, was available to view for one month only. High neck. Huge sleeves. Lace. Roses. Ruffles. A frou-frou masterpiece that can whisk middle-aged Britons back to November 1988. School. Lincolnshire. Where the wonderful Mrs Russell let us watch the ceremony at lunchtime on the telly in the sixth form centre. She understood the gravitas of the situation; this wasn’t just family getting married. This was our royalty. The wedding of the century.
For much of Britain, what even was Australia before Neighbours? A galaxy far, far away that people disappeared to, like the two ginger-haired boys from Doughty Street in my home town in the 70s. The revelation “We are moving to Perth” was greeted with sharp intakes of breath and a hesitant, loaded: “All the very best with that!” It was a place that featured with terrifying frequency on the reunion segment of Surprise Surprise – the big finale where Cilla Black would tell some bewildered pensioner that her sister from Brisbane, who she hadn’t seen for 37 years, was about to come on stage. Australia was further away than the moon.
Of course, we’d had their soaps before – the theme tune from Sons and Daughters was practically our soundtrack to skiving off school – but we’d never seen this Australia before. Neighbours reset it all. It was so bright. It had cafes, hangouts and HSCs (higher school certificates). They seemed so much sexier than GCSEs. And, if you failed them, you could just start your own chauffeuring business. Whenever I’m in Melbourne and I see a green car, I wonder if Helen Daniels’ “Home James” service is still operating.
Moreover, Neighbours had teenagers who argued with their parents and then went out and had fun. No moping around Albert Square meeting up with the secret father of your baby, Michelle Fowler style. Young Australians went to the beach. It was an odd place, without a pier, donkeys or fruit machines, but it looked amazing. Zero sharks and lots of splashing about with hot boys.
And here was the real attraction: Australian men. Scott/Jason. They were interchangeable to me. Not the gauche Foster-swigging Paul Hogan stereotype of Australian men. Scott/Jason was supportive of Charlene/Kylie’s effortlessly feminist mechanic ambitions. Then there was sensitive grafter Mike/Guy Pearce, who ended up dating Plain Jane “Super Brain” Harris. What is this wonderful world? It’s a country where geeks can score a hot guy and working-class people can have detached houses with big yards. It’s a country where even labradors can dare to dream.
But, like Bouncer’s nocturnal hallucinations, it was all fantasy. Back then, I had no desire to live abroad. With my teenage panic attacks, Peterborough was as far as I could get. But, somewhere within me, a seed must have been sown. The media in the 90s was littered with Australians. They were everywhere. I was friends with lots of them; I married one. After a decade of living in the UK, he said: “Why don’t we live there for a bit?” It was terrifying. But Skype had arrived: you could now actually see people that were far away. And the echoes of Erinsborough were in my brain.
Neighbours became, in my mind, the pseudo-documentary on which I based one of the key decisions of my life. It would all be OK. Madge. Jim. Clive. Helen. I just had to avoid cliffs. “Harrrrrrrolllllddddd!”
As we prepared for the move, I sorted through some of my partner’s old Polaroids from the 80s. He looked, I realised, like an extra from Lassiter’s coffee shop. When I recently shared the photo on Facebook, I embellished the post with what I thought was an obvious lie: “He had been in the soap for seven episodes as waiter Jason Byrne in Mr Udagawa’s hotel complex.” Despite the ludicrousness of the claim, some of my friends believed it. He did have the look of the Donovans about him. Neighbours, it seems, gave me a deep Australian kink. And I didn’t even know it.
Life tumbles on. Living here for “a bit” has turned into more than a decade. Rarely do you see your life as a complete series – more like chapters and episodes. However, in that one wedding dress, I saw my trajectory from teen to 50. From that mad, fat adolescent who couldn’t go anywhere to a functioning adult … on a bloody island near Antarctica.
At the time of writing, Charlene’s dress is about to be packed away safely in a box at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. I have no idea what it will mean to future generations, but I suspect Minogue’s endless and joyful reincarnations will ensure its relevance. For me, it will always be more than a dress. So much more than a symbol of romance. By the time you get to a half-century, you know the limitations of that. And yes, I am still married to my brilliant Aussie.
Neighbours opened up the world for me. Scott and Charlene have sat in my soul for years. Their wedding – along with all the 80s frills Minogue wore – is a reminder of when I needed to believe there was something else. A bigger, better future that, at that time and in that mental state, I couldn’t quite conceive of. I still have days like that, wherever I am in the world. Don’t we all? That’s when a good dose of frothy soap can make all the difference. Onya Neighbours.
