H&A Marks ANZAC Centenary
Home and Away will be commemorating the ANZAC Centenary with a special storyline for Summer Bay favourite Alf Stewart in the run up to ANZAC Day.
The storyline will begin as Alf becomes disillusioned by the blasé attitude some of the town’s youngsters have towards Australia & New Zealand’s national day of remembrance. This year is particularly significant as it marks the 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli landings, in which Australian and New Zealand forces joined the allied campaign to storm the Gallipoli peninsula on 25th April 1915. Over 10,000 Australian and New Zealand soldiers died in the campaign.
The storyline will see Alf join the school excursion to the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, during which he will experience some disturbing flashbacks to his own war service in Vietnam during the 1960’s.
When the group later spend a night in the ‘trenches’ as part of a WWI re-enactment, it all proves too much for Alf who, clearly suffering from post-traumatic stress, wanders off and collapses. The teens, who have been deeply affected by their experience, rally together and Alf is eventually found and airlifted to hospital.
Whilst recovering, Alf will meet WWII veteran Tom Knight, played by 91 year old former pilot and retired actor Vincent Ball. Tom, who has no family and is dying a lonely death in the hospital, provides Alf with a much needed morale boost before later passing away. Back in the bay, the storyline will culminate in a touching dawn service on the beach.
The storyline was first mentioned as a possibility by Ray Meagher in a webchat interview for UK broadcaster Channel 5 in May 2014. During the interview he stated that “There is some talk of a storyline which helps celebrate the 100th anniversary of the First World War. There’s a possibility of a storyline for me there, which will go through my character’s history and my family’s involvement in the wars. But whether that gets through the powers that be, who knows?”
Originally the show were looking to film some of the storyline on the Western Front in France, but as Ray explained in a recent interview with the Daily Telegraph, “There weren’t enough bikkies in the tin”. Instead the show settled on the war memorial in Canberra, with a makeshift trench in Sydney’s southwest utilising part of a set from the 2009 film X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
Ray, 70, said of the storyline “It’s the best storyline I’ve had in a while and I felt humbled to be tackling such important material. I only hope we do it justice … as a way to honour all our service men and women.”
Alf’s service has been touched upon in previous years. We’ve previously learnt that Alf was wounded during battle and his life was saved by his good friend Geoff Marshall, who was also from Summer Bay. In later years they sailed to Fiji together, but Geoff had never come to terms with what he experienced in Vietnam.
In 1997, after missing a call from him earlier in the day, Alf learned that Geoff had committed suicide, leaving Alf wracked with guilt for not being there for him. After going through his old photo album, Alf experienced flashbacks to their time in the war and broke down. The episode won the 1998 Australian Film Institute award for Best Episode in a Television Serial Drama.
Away from the conflict, we also learnt that Alf had a fling with an American lady named Mary Jackson, who unbeknown to Alf at the time, later bore his child Quinn (played by Danielle Spencer in 1995).
Australian viewers will see the storyline begin on Monday 13th April, with it hitting the UK on Monday 11th May. The promo from Seven can be viewed below:
Like Alf, our forum moderator John is a Vietnam veteran, and offers us this insight into the ANZAC tradition:
The traditions of courage, mateship and sacrifice which grew up during the original ANZAC landings at Gallipoli in 1915 have become a major part of Australian Military tradition. All Australians and particularly servicemen since have been urged to be custodians of the “Spirit of the ANZACs”. This includes those involved in more recent conflicts such as World War 2, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan and others.
As a part of his military service during the Vietnam war in the 1960’s and early 1970’s Alf would have seen himself as the inheritor of that tradition and would have remembered his own service on ANZAC Day.
Many Vietnam veterans returned to an atmosphere of community hostility and protest because sections of the Australian community saw the war as unjust and were strongly opposed to our nation’s involvement. This meant that many physical and psychological effects were never effectively dealt with until many years later. This may have been the case with Alf.
This is not the case these days and ANZAC Day is recognised with a huge involvement of young people alongside older members of the community. Many young people “march their ancestors medals” worn on the right side of the chest rather than the left as a mark of respect and remembrance to those who served.
For more information on ANZAC Day, see the following links:
Australian War Memorial – ANZAC Day
ANZAC Centenary Website