Today it is time for the most culturally enriching and symbolic event of my travels. It is a pilgrimage of epic proportions that no self respecting visitor to Australia could possibly miss out on. That's right - I'm going on the official Neighbours tour.
I couldn't possibly come all this way and not see the settings of a soap that I watched religiously every day for many years (until I started working and realised that it was, on balance, shit). This programme took up more of my time in front of the tele during my youth than probably any other. On some days - before, of course, the internet - I would be so bored I would even watch both showings of it. This is all pretty sad, I know. But I'm looking forward to a nostalgic trip down memory lane.
The official tour bus picks me up from near my hotel in St Kilda at the ungodly hour of 8.30am. It is packed full of Brits. No self respecting Aussie watches Neighbours, let alone goes on the tour. On board the organisers get us in the mood by playing popular hits from former Neighbours stars. As the sounds of 'Locomotion' by Kylie reverberate around the bus, for most people it's probably nostalgic. For me, it just feels like I'm back in a bloody gay bar...
The Neighbours set is a good half an hour out of town, so we are shown a classic episode to entertain us - that of Daphne's death. As it plays and we travel down the pristinely clean and vastly wide streets of Melbourne, it dawns on me that this episode is nearly 20 years old. It was shown so long ago, but yet not only can I remember it, I can remember where I saw it (The tv room in the Norfolk County Council sports and social club, to be precise, whilst Mum had a drink with friends after work).
Erinsborough, the suburb where it is set, doesn't actually exist. It's an anagram of Neighbours. It's name is actually Blackburn, but I think we can forgive the programme makers for choosing not to set the soap in a place that shares its name with a grubby, depressing, boring northern shithole.
The bus takes us to Erinsborough High School, which is a real school, but is actually the Blackburn English Language School. This is a school for immigrant children to learn English at. It must be rather baffling for them to arrive in a foreign country, be sent to school to learn a language that originated on the other side of the world and then find hordes of people from that country gawping through the gates taking photos of an imaginary school from a tv programme they've proabably never seen or heard of. I don't know about you, but I would find that strange.
Eventually we arrive in Ramsay Street, which is a real street, but is actually called Pin Oak Court. Famously, the houses are homes to ordinary people and no filming is done inside. The street is closed off two days a week for filming and the owners are financially recompensed for the hassle of living in a tourist destination. It would be too expensive for Channel 10 to buy up the properties.
The first thing that strikes you about 'Ramsay Street' is now small it is. The second is how incredibly familiar it seems. I recognise all the houses immediately and can instantly remember who lived in them when I was watching the show. It really is quite strange to be in a street I feel I know so well, and yet it is on the other side of the world and I'd never been there before.
Other people on the tour, some of whom rather worryingly still watch the show, go on about how they feel so sorry for the people that live in the street, how awful it must be to have your privacy invaded - whilst simultaneously ogling their homes and taking endless photographs of them. I'm sorry, but I don't actually feel any sympathy for the owners of these homes. They are paid money to have their homes used as scenery and are invariably at work when this is done. It's not as if they have to actually hand control of their bathroom to Harold Bishop twice a week. I wouldn't mind being paid to have someone film in the street outside my home. It's money for doing precisely, erm, nothing. Most people probably wouldn't want tourists standing outside their home all day and every day, I grant you. But if you don't like it, sell up. And just think how much you would get for selling your house on Ramsay Street, a property recognisable to people across the world. I asked our tour guide how much you could expect to fetch. The answer? At least a million dollars. So, no, I don't feel sorry for these people!
After a thoroughly enjoyable morning of nostalgia, we are dropped back in St Kilda, where there is the opportunity to meet one of the current stars of Neighbours. As I haven't seen an episode in about six or seven years, I don't bother with this and instead head to one of the area's many fantastic eateries for brunch.
If it wasn't physically impossible and financially irresponsible, I think I could spend all day and every day in Melbourne just eating. The food is just absolutely divine.
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