118-146
As the Home and Away Most Popular Character countdown continues, find out who scored four and five points, landing in positions 118 to 146.
118. Charlotte King (5 points)
Played by Erika Heynatz
Charlotte still proves surprisingly popular. It was hard not to feel a bit sorry for her, given she got made the town outcast when she only seemed to turn bad through covering up for son Hunter. Then again, she did kill an awful lot of people.
118= Coco Astoni (5 points)
Played by Anna Cocquerel
The younger Astoni sister seemed to leave rather quickly and abruptly. She started off in the odd role of a maybe-maybe-not love interest for VJ, and then seemed to fulfill the same role for Ryder, who she always broke up with as soon as they got together.
118= Edward Dunglass (5 points)
Played by Stephen James King
Finishing higher than sort-of-wife Peta, Edward was a moody goth, which is perhaps understandable given he had a life-limiting disease. He also seemed to become a kind of surrogate son to Donald but didn’t last very long.
118= Geoff Campbell (5 points)
Played by Lincoln Lewis
The older brother of Annie who, unlike her, did become a bit too conventional after a few months living with Irene. He had a relationship with Nicole which didn’t really last that long despite the build-up, coupled with an odd habit of dating his sister’s friends.
118= Harry Reynolds (5 points)
Played by Justin Melvey
One of those implausibly young and good-looking teachers who seemed to end up at odds with Donald Fisher…which was a bit unfortunate in his case, since he ended up as a stepson. Jacked in teaching to become a seaplane pilot.
118= Karen Thompson (5 points)
Played by Georgia Adamson
The mother of Dean was last seen hanging around like someone who couldn’t take a hint after the birth of granddaughter Izzy. She actually did a surprisingly good job of breaking out of her initial Bad Mum role and building a good relationship with Dean.
118= Luke Cunningham (5 points)
Played by John Adam
Another one of the younger male teachers who was a bit more informal than Donald would have liked. So much so that Alf and Michael thought he was a long-haired layabout when they first met him. Had an on-off thing going with sometime housemate Roxy.
118= Max Sutherland (5 points)
Played by Sebastian Elmaloglou
Added to the roster of Sutherland children once Kirsty and Jade had got a bit older as the nephew of Rhys. He had a bit of a crush on step-cousin Matilda that went nowhere before being the only person to ever run away to boarding school.
118= Peter Baker (5 points)
Played by Nicholas Bishop
Initially Peter just seemed to be a slightly more interesting than usual detective character, but when his brother got introduced as a new husband for Leah, Peter quickly joined him as a regular. He eventually got a happy ever after by…marrying his brother’s first wife. Yeah.
118= Romeo Smith (5 points)
Played by Luke Mitchell
Romeo still seems to have his fans, which didn’t really seem to be the case when he was on the show. Possibly one of the oldest-looking schoolboys (a hotly-contested title), he had a teen marriage with Indi where they broke up and got back together before he skipped town rather than tell her he was dying.
118= Sharon Welles (5 points)
Played by Shayne Francis
Okay, I can just about understand Jazz Curtis, but how has Justine’s mum made it onto the poll? Sharon only appeared in a handful of episodes and is mostly notable for trying to frame her daughter for murder in order to sell the story to the papers.
118= Tony Holden (5 points)
Played by Jon Sivewright
The down-with-it patriarch of the Holden family (how old was he meant to be when he had Jack, again?) who went from being a PE teacher to owning a gym and gained a much younger wife along the way.
118= Will Smith (5 points)
Played by Zac Drayson
I think we all pretty much want to forget about Will’s last stint, where they basically brought him in to be the culprit in a whodunnit. Prior to that, he was Irene’s de facto stepson who had a lengthy on-off relationship with Gypsy that saw them get married just before his first exit. Return appearances can be death to happy endings…
131. Bronte Langford (4 points)
Played by Stefanie Caccamo
The surprisingly successful con artist who managed to convince three different towns she was dying of something vague and undefined before being brought down by the intellectual might of Dana. Maybe people like her for locking Dana in a shipping crate or telling Irene she can be a bit rubbish at times.
131= Floss McPhee (4 points)
Played by Sheila Kennelly
Well, Floss has finished reasonably high up for a character that was gone by the show’s second anniversary and has polled above husband Neville. Like him, she was a retired circus performer hanging around the caravan park. Unlike him, she suddenly started popping up for guest appearances over a decade later, with people struggling to remember who she was.
131= Gina Austin/Palmer (4 points)
Played by Sonia Todd
Late wife of John, who came in as the sister of Tony with a trio of sons, most of which appeared considerably less than her. She ended up as the principal of Summer Bay High largely on the grounds of being pretty much the only teacher that was allowed to speak. She wouldn’t be the last.
131= Hunter King (4 points)
Played by Scott Lee
Well this is interesting: Hunter gets one less point than his supposedly villainous mother. Maybe the show’s argument that she was to blame for everything he did didn’t quite stick after all? On the other hand, he’s got more points that on-off girlfriend Olivia and best mate/stepbrother VJ!
131= Izzy Astoni-Thompson (4 points)
Played by various actors
The daughter of Dean and Ziggy. That’s pretty much the extent of her character. I guess someone thought she was really good at lying in her carry cot and looking a bit confused?
131= Lucas Holden (4 points)
Played by Rhys Wakefield
Just one point below his dad is the younger of the Holden boys, the one who was still at school and had to put up with both Matilda and Belle deciding they liked his friends more than him. He ended up as a vague big brother figure to Geoff and Annie, which was nice.
131= Matt Wilson (4 points)
Played by Greg Benson
A reappearance in the latter stages of the poll for another of the originals. He lasted nearly four years, but people still struggled to work out who he was when he made a return appearance a decade later. He didn’t even get an exit storyline, he just had best mate Adam casually mention months after we last saw him that he’d left.
131= Paris Burnett (4 points)
Played by Rhett Giles
Possibly the shortest-serving principal of Summer Bay High that wasn’t just there to be a villain. He was also Irene’s toy boy, something that Lynne McGranger seems to find impossible not to laugh about in interviews.
131= Peter Bedford (4 points)
Played by Bevan Wilson
“Who?” you may ask. Yes, so did I. A Macklin client who got invited to a dinner party at the Fletchers’, where he managed to push Bobby’s berserk button and pretty much prove her and Frank were doomed. He appeared in two episodes in 1989. Freya Duric was a regular in comparison.
131= Raffy Morrison (4 points)
Played by Olivia Deeble
Raffy’s one of those characters who used to be right at the top of these polls but seems to have fallen out of public consciousness to the point of finishing one point below best friend Coco, who was in it a lot less. We didn’t even get a proper explanation for why she wasn’t at brother Justin’s wedding this year!
131= Rebecca Fisher/Nash (4 points)
Played by Belinda Emmett
You never quite knew what you were going to get with Rebecca, partly because you never quite knew what she was going to look like. She was Donald’s daughter, who alternated between being a wild child and a quiet girl before settling down and marrying Travis, who’d been engaged to someone else a few months earlier.
131= Sam Marshall (4 points)
Played by Ryan Clark
In 1991, it dawned on the show that Sally was a bit too old to fill the “cute kid” role, so Sam was brought in to take over. Like Sally, he proceeded to grow up on the show and end up with a makeshift family of his own. Unlike Sally, he didn’t end up running the caravan park and the school.
131= Sarah Lewis (4 points)
Played by Luisa Hastings-Edge
Even though gun-toting drug-related villains taking people hostage is pretty much Tuesday in Summer Bay these days, Sarah continues to stick in people’s minds. Maybe because her refusal to accept she’d killed her own boyfriend gave her a bit more of a dimension or maybe just because she was the first.
131= Shelley Sutherland (4 points)
Played by Paula Forrest
Shelley was the mother of the Sutherland clan and social worker in charge of the drop-in centre, who seemed to be threatening to become the show’s new lead character when she first appeared in 2000, only to be written out after a little over two years by walking out on her family on an impulse. She did end up back with them though.