Zac Burgess
Zac Burgess (1989‒1990)
Mark Conroy
Episodes: 441‒457
Zac came to town in the aftermath of Rory being found dead after a shark attack. Zac attended the public meeting to discuss the incident, saying that he was a shark hunter and that he would catch the shark for $5000 now and $5000 on it’s capture, plus expenses. Alf and the rest of the town turned him away but Gordon Macklin, keen for good publicity, offered him $2000 which he accepted.
Gordon later came to see him and offered to double his money if he didn’t catch the shark as the town was gaining good publicity by having the shark there. Out on his boat he caught a shark but let it go, muttering about Macklin’s promise. When Carly came to see him about catching the shark he kissed her forcibly, taking her by surprise.
He befriended Tom but his real agenda was revealed when he began coming onto Pippa. She tried to tell Tom but he laughed her accusations off so Pippa banned Zac from coming to the house. When she came to have a go at him in his caravan, she dropped an earring and Zac used it as ‘evidence’ to boast about his affair with Pippa to Carly. Zac tried to give Pippa chocolates which she threw back at him but Carly found them and when Pippa lied about where they came from, she grew further suspicious. As Pippa questioned his motives, Ailsa overheard part of the conversation and having already heard Carly’s suspicions, came to believe that Pippa was having an affair with Zac.
Gordon Macklin paid him more money not to kill the shark and Alf came to see him and offered him $1000 dollars to leave Pippa alone and get out of town. Zac refused though and Alf attacked him. Zac threatened him and insisted that Alf had it wrong about him and Pippa but that he was staying in town. At a town meeting where Alf proposed that the shark hunter leave, it was Tom who unknowingly voted to let him stay a few days longer.
He announced that he had caught the shark and celebrated by kissing Pippa. She pushed him away and slapped him but not before Tom had seen them. At the surf club the town members, shocked at Zac’s ‘affair’ with Pippa, insisted on an autopsy on the shark he had caught. Zac agreed but attempted to con the town members by organising the autopsy two hours early but Andrew, Adam and Alf hid in the curtains and caught them out. They demanded to watch the autopsy and weren’t surprised when the shark Zac had caught turned out to have no body inside it.
Despite being caught out, Zac refused to leave town and instead boasted about the ‘attractions’ the town held for him. Adam, determined to force Zac out of town went out and caught the shark himself but Zac still refused to leave. Bobby, Fisher and Steven helped Pippa set him up by having Pippa pretend to go along with an affair before rejecting him and broadcasting it to a town meeting but the microphone failed and Tom, at the meeting, only heard Pippa going along with the affair. He attacked Zac but Zac quickly got the better of him but left town after realising how unpopular he was and that no-one, not even Tom, really believed his story.