Home and Away celebrates 35th birthday

The long-running soap first hit the small screen on January 17, 1988 and it's still going strong.

During 7945 episodes there's been crashes, catastrophes and calamities, that have kept audiences in Australia and overseas entertained.

There have been more than 110 deaths, with at least one character dying every year, except for in 1994.

Joy has also filled their lives with 43 marriages and 34 births.

The show has filmed in the UK three times, along with Hawaii, Melbourne, NSW Blue Mountains, Northern Territory, Stockton Beach in NSW's Hunter region, Nowra on NSW's South Coast and White Cliffs in outback NSW.

Home and Away has collected more than 45 Logies, which is more than any other Australian show, and in 2015 it was inducted into the Logies Hall of Fame.

Kate Richie was just nine years old when she made her first appearance in the show's pilot as Sally. She ended up staying in Summer Bay until 2008 in a whopping 4610 episodes. She was awarded two Gold Logies during her 20-year stint.

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Emily Symons loves the show that much, she's been at the Bay three times to play Marilyn Chambers - 1989-92, 1995-99 and 2010 to present. In 2001, she reprised her role as Marilyn in four episodes set in London.

But Ray Meagher beats them all. He was there for the show's pilot as Alf Stewart, and he's still there 35 years later. Strewth, he even holds the Guinness World Record as the longest serving actor in an Australian soap.

When asked why he's stuck with the show so long, the 78-year-old's answer is simple: "I love it".

"I have thoroughly enjoyed over 90 per cent of the time I've been here, probably 95 per cent. A lot of that goes down to core cast and core crew, a lot of them have been there as long as I have," he said.

Stars have been killed off, brought back and put through cliffhanging story lines - who could forget when tragedy struck and Alisa died of a heart attack after lifting some heavy boxes in 2000, and then two years later when she came back from the dead.

Billie Ashford had only been married for days when she died in her husband's arms in 2017. Tension was high when Mason Morgan was killed off in 2020 after being shot dead during a dramatic siege.

And, in 2006 Summer Bay favourite Sally was stabbed... she survived.

In its 35th year, Home and Away welcomed its first Indigenous main character in 28-year-old Widjabul man Kyle Manning who's from the Bundjalung nation. He will play the character of Mali Hudson.

Some of the show's former cast went on to be among the biggest names in entertainment - Chris Hemsworth, Isla Fisher, Naomi Watts, Julian McMahon and the late great Heath Ledger, just to name a few.

Home and Away has attracted its fair share of celebrity guest appearances, including John Farnham in 1988. He played himself and was in the Bay to play a special concert for Sally.

He's not the only one, the star list also includes: Simon Baker (1993), Lleyton Hewitt (2005), Johanna Griggs (1992), Jess Mauboy (2016), Sia (1997), Ian Thorpe (2000), Lisa Curry (1996), Nick Grimshaw (2015), Kostya Tszyu (1997) and Ed Sheeran (2015).

Does Mr Meagher get an inkling when he sees a star in the making on the set of Home and Away? Sometimes he admits.

"Chris Hemsworth was the obvious one that you could see coming a mile off. God was very kind to him, he certainly wasn't behind the tree when they handed out the good looks and the physique," he said.

"He just worked his backside off, he really worked hard at his craft. If anybody deserved to be a success it was him, if anybody looked like they were going to be it was him. He really did have it all."

Brilliant script writing and the stunning Palm Beach (Summer Bay) backdrop gives the show universal appeal, Mr Meagher said.

"There's a lot of very good, strong, relevant storylines. Our writers are frightened to deal with issues," he said.

Flamin' mongrels, strike me roan and stone the flamin' crows, these sayings by Alf Stewart are not only iconic, they were actually Mr Meagher's addition to the character.

"What I tried to do was make the character an archetypal Aussie knockabout character, and to do that use some of those expressions I heard when I was a young boy growing up in the bush in Queensland," he said.

The expression "stone the flamin' crows" comes from a stock and station agent he once overheard.

"He'd fit stone the flamin' crows into one sentence 25 times, and the more rum and cokes he had the more he'd use the expression. As an eight or nine kid I thought it was really funny," Mr Meagher said.

Home and Away returned to Channel 7 on January 9, 2023.