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Published: February 22nd 2007
My stay in Melbourne just would not have been complete without a tour to see the sights of the legendary aussie soap, 'Neighbours'! I was in luck on my trip. As I waited at the office to meet the tour bus, the guide excitedly told us that we would wait a while before leaving as a long running member of the cast would be popping in to sort something out with them. Turns out it was Alan Fletcher, a Neighbours veteran of over twelve years who plays 'Dr Karl Kennedy'! Very cool to see someone that you recognise even if you aren't really a regular viewer. He was genuinely a nice bloke too, more than happy to pose for photos, autograph some Neighbours postcards, and have a bit of a chat with everyone before the tour.
In good spirits from meeting 'Doctor Karl', we set off to our first destination, 'Blackburn English Language School'. This school for foreign students is transformed with television magic (hanging a sign on the fence outside), into 'Erinsborough High'! Sad trivia for you, the fictional (yes, it's not real!) Melbourne suburb of 'Erinsborough' is actually an anagram of the word 'Neighbours'.
Next, we went
to the studios. A big red building which contains the sets for the insides of the houses, and has small, barred, imitation windows on the outside, a hangover from the days when 'Prisoner Cell Block H' was filmed there! Unfortuneately we were not allowed inside, nor were we allowed into the 'Lassiters Complex', the shops and hotel owned by the evil Paul Robinson! Supposedly you are usually allowed to go to Lassiters but there is some sort of problem with insurance or something. Slightly dissapointing as these are some of the most recognisable features of the show, but we had got to meet Dr Karl, and when we mooched around the shabby old set outside of 'Lou's Garage', where a young Kylie once worked in dirty overalls, we got a brief glimpse of a couple more actors that play 'Boyd' and 'Steph'!
The final destination, 'Ramsay Street', is again fictional, the street is actually a tiny culd-de-sac called Pin Oak Court. It was unbelievable how small "Ramsay Street" really is, but the houses where they film the external shots were very recognisable. Surprisingly, the studio does not own or rent these houses, they are just regular houses in a
Melbourne suburb. However the studio does compensate the ownwers extremely handsomely, making the houses incredibly rare to come onto the market as you can supposedly make a fairly comfortable income just from owning one!
The street even comes with it's own twenty-four hour security guard, supplied by the studio to make sure nobody harrases the occupants of "Ramsay Street". They had some problems with youths taking their cars up there to do burnouts up the road so that they could admire their handiwork on telly! Apparently, the final straw was when a randy young couple were caught shagging on Harold's lawn, hence the need for a security guard!
Well, an entertaining trip, and a true highlight of my travels in Australia! Also, I have included here some pictures of the Possums that live in the tree outside my share house, totally unrelated to the Neighbours thing but this is the final blog from Melbourne so I had to get them in somewhere! Next stop, Sydney...
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Man Bag
Looks like you were having a great time there, But the last thing i thought i would catch you with is a MAN BAG!!!