Dan F

Well, it’s hard to believe but as of today, 14th January 2014, ‘Back to the Bay’ is 10 years old! There’s an article on the main site detailing some of the history of the site, as well as some pics of days gone by, but I thought I’d give a personal perspective in this thread. Whilst it’s a bit of an old cringeworthy cliché to say it’s been a “life changing experience”, my own involvement with the site has certainly had a huge effect on mine. In 2003 I came across Jeremai’s ‘Home and Away Source’ website, it stood out as one of only a couple of sites that actually provided original content rather than copying and pasting stuff from the official site (the latter of which is a practice that still continues to this day sadly!). As I’d spent a week in Los Angeles with a few H&A cast members a year earlier, I contacted him to see if he’d be interested in some pics and a report of the trip. Jeremai’s H&A site merged with Chris’ existing Aussiesoap site & forum in September 2003. The forum later turned into EverySoap, which as the name suggested had a subforum for soaps from the UK, Oz and also the US. The main BacktotheBay site was created on 14th January 2004 alongside a long-gone Neighbours site. The Everysoap forum continued until September 2004 when that was finally rebranded as BTTB, with all accounts and H&A related forums moved over. Whilst it’s quite a struggle remembering the forum that far back, I do remember a rather bizarre Games Arcade built into the board software which got rather competitive. I’d only got around to re-registering to the Everysoap forum on 12th January 2004, and I slowly got involved in helping out with features for BTTB, alongside Ryan. In June 2004, a day I remember due to it being the day of my college graduation ball, we were both asked to join the staff - Ryan as a Contributor and myself as a Moderator. Only a couple of months later I made my first month long trip to Palm Beach, and from that came our very first location photographs, alongside a small behind-the-scenes feature and video. 2005 brought about another interesting year with having the pleasure of conducting two phone interviews with former cast members - one of whom kindly invited me along to the H&A cast party in London’s Leicester Square, and who remains a mate to this very day. At Christmas 2005 after a couple of ‘guest stints’ whilst Chris was away, I was made an Admin permanently. In 2007 I headed back to Palm Beach for a longer stay and spent 6 weeks stalking a very welcoming H&A crew, and travelling around NSW taking hundreds of location photos (a task now undertaken by QA until my return!). Whilst some other planned activities never came to fruition due to internal politics at Seven, I did have the pleasure of meeting with Bevan Lee and discussing some of the outstanding storylines that were going to feature in H&A’s 20th year, as well as receiving genuine gratitude for all the support that both BTTB and its members had provided the show with. The previous year we had also run a story on behalf of North Palm Beach Surf Lifesaving Club advertising their upcoming open day, after which they were able to increase their number of members by over 70%. As a result, on my arrival in Palm Beach I was graciously given a bag full of merchandise and an honorary membership to the club. The Surf Club were also kind enough to donate more goodies for our Scriptwriting Competitions in the years following. The competitions were head-judged by former H&A Script Producer Coral Drouyn, who had herself been an active member of the forum in previous years. In its final year, the competition was held in honour of one of our forum moderators Frankie (also chief whip of the previous competitions), who had passed away six months earlier. The past few years we've concentrated on trying to build up BTTB as a one stop reference site for the show, something which I hope will continue long into the future. I know updates have been a bit far and few between in recent months, but I've had plans for some major revamps for some time now - I'm just lacking the technical ability so have to wait until Chris is available to help. I know I’m not the only one for who the forum has had a big effect - whilst I won’t name names I know there’s been friendships formed; fledgling writers at the start of their careers testing the water in the Fanfiction forum & scriptwriting competitions; discussions on the forum that have later manifested themselves into the show; and even a bit of real life romance between members! Sadly we did lose the first year of posts after a forum crash in early 2005 and a few other glitches, with some gems such as the first ‘BTTB Big Brother’ and an infamous discussion about cabbages being forever lost. Our last statistical milestone came in July 2012 when we reached both 900,000 posts and 19,000 members on the same day. So once again, a big thanks to all the staff who have contributed to BTTB over the past decade (which are listed on the main site but also copied in below), and most of all to all the members who have helped create such a thriving H&A community! Thousands have come and gone, but there are still a small amount of people who have been with us since the first years of BTTB’s existence – so an extra thanks to you ‘Golden Oldies’ (remember that back in the day?) for sticking around! Administrators Chris Jenkins, Dan Foster Forum Moderators Dean, -Karen-, Nick (Foxy), Jen, John (john003au) and Meredith (Mez83) Contributors Barbara, Red Ranger 1 and Ryan Librarian Quiet Achiever Former BTTB staff members: Anaya, Andy, Bttb-rox!, Cal, Cat, Cerise, Claire, Edward Skylover, Eli, Emmasi, Frankie, Jackieleanne, JameyMaria, Jeremai, JosieTash, -Kirst-, Lisa P, Liz, MarMar, Melmarshall858, Nicom, NuttyNeighbour, Scandal-01, Si-Co, Skykat, Theresa and Valli. Please feel free to share with us any of your own memories from over the years, whether you're a long term member or a relatively new one!

There's a large number of guest character profiles from various eras being uploaded at the moment over on the site, with today's update including a pre-Ricky Bonnie Sveen. A big thanks to RR1 once again who's written the majority of these ones - I've quite a backlog to get through You can see the full list of updates so far here

Still a fair while, should be Tuesday 10th June if they keep broadcasting as normal.

Emily started filming in October 2009, but I believe she was only on a one year contract to start with (when I was informed of her return I was told that she'd be back for 'at least a year'). So one presumes that if she later re-signed with a standard 3-year contract in October 2010, it would take her up to October 2013. That's just purely guesswork and presumptions of course, but

There was a software update over the weekend which must have glitched a few things, I've let Chris know.

What channel and when, please? have we got to wait 4 weeks to find out if Josh recovers fully and where he goes to live? Can't be anyone left at his home now! They're referring to the Australian showings I'm afraid, there's no episodes old or new for the UK over the Christmas break.

Sirin by Birds of Tokyo

Morag's city mansion was only in a handful of scenes but I'm pretty sure you can't see Sydney harbour from the real life location, and certainly don't recall seeing it in the shots on screen (technically it is near the Lane Cover River which is a tributary of it, but again I don't recall actually seeing views of it in the scenes). That is one location already photographed awaiting upload to the site. As you mentioned I think most of the obvious inner city locations have been covered by others in the thread - other ones are usually quite minor and depend on your definition of 'central Sydney'. I know it's not possible to view locations by area on the site (something which we're working on as we speak), so here's a few that are closest to Sydney CBD: Chinatown Josie's Brothel (Alf & Ailsa also went around this area in episode 592 when they were looking for Blake & Karen) Kim & Rachel's Hotel (Quay West hotel) Meg & Blake's Hotel (the Park Hyatt under the harbour bridge) A slightly wider radius include such places as: Sally & Flynn's Wedding Yabbie Creek Racecourse Fletcher's City House Young St Medical Centre Kane's Trial Barbara's House The Rocket Club Peter & Amanda's City House

True I'm afraid, I've been inputting 2014 UK airdates on current eps for the past month on the site, the season finale will air in the UK on 28th February. And yes John, it goes off for the month of August (during the school holidays when it apparently rates lower) and then for a few weeks over christmas. Then they wonder why people go searching for alternative sources for episodes.

How do you know?. It was no secret - http://www.backtothebay.net/news/2007/07/02/cathy-cancer-battle.shtml

Oh right. Thanks, Dan F. I went to re-edit my signature but it won't work again as it said I must enter my signature up to 0 lines. I tried putting these sentences in my signature together not separate like a paragraph but it won't work. :s Should be fixed

I changed a setting in order to automatically limit signatures to 5 lines, rather than having to chase people to change them. The reason it rejected yours was because it was is over 5 lines - your current '3 line' signature is actually 5 as you've added a blank line between each one. I'll turn it off again as it obviously doesn't distinguish between blank lines and text. The signature rule is a tricky one and whilst we state 5 lines of text, we then use our discretion due to different font sizes etc.

You've only JUST seen it? You're slipping....it's been there since you changed your signature that last but one time a couple of weeks back. Maybe I should have put "unintentionally" in there, but a bit late now - will be removing it soon anyway

Probably 1996-97 They might just start S&D from the beginning again though Just a case of doubling the episode numbers - Friday's is 950 so if we were on double episodes we'd be on Episode 1900 which aired in April 1996. Think a few of us may have struggled to keep up though

It's good that you brought it up as I don't actually see that text myself as an Admin for some reason, so wasn't actually aware of it

Nope that's just what the default instructions are for the board software, we have our own rules on signatures. Will try and work out if that text can be changed to reflect those.

She returns for 984-993 (about 8 weeks time on 7Two) and then again the following week from 999-1003. That's the last we see of her until the 2nd ep of 1993 when Lynne takes over

Let's dust this thread off and see if we get any renewed interest Just as with Ryan's last post in here last year, we've now completed our 6-monthly current character profile updates, covering the first half of the 2013 season up to the end of June. This also completes Liam, Romeo and Gina's profiles. As of today we also have new profiles for Zac, Ricky, Spencer and Maddy. Big thanks to Red Ranger 1 for taking the time to bring all those up to date for us! http://www.backtothebay.net/characters/

You're right in that it wasn't explicitly said on screen, but she was listed as a sister in the aforementioned character background for Alf - so she was certainly there as a sister in the minds of the show's creators at least.

She was shown in the flashback from Alf's childhood in 2010, also mentioned by Celia In 1988. Yup it was literally just that one mention from Celia and she was never heard of again. It was due to the continued discussion of her on BTTB (plus a few mentions from myself) that Bevan Lee ensured her existance would be included in the 2010 flashback. Short character profile for her here After reading her character profile I was surprised to read that she was born in 1960 . I was thinking more like 1950 or even the late 1940s. That came from the original character background info for Alf from when the show first started - there's always debate as to what should be denoted as 'canon', but I find it's easiest to take something as given until proved otherwise on screen (unless it's a particularly bad continuity error, then I just tend to go with what the show's creators intended ).

It was Lance's father who changed name. Martin's father was credited as Fred in 1988 and as Ern in 1989.

She was shown in the flashback from Alf's childhood in 2010, also mentioned by Celia In 1988. Yup it was literally just that one mention from Celia and she was never heard of again. It was due to the continued discussion of her on BTTB (plus a few mentions from myself) that Bevan Lee ensured her existance would be included in the 2010 flashback. Short character profile for her here

I've now enabled it, there's a maximum of 10 likes per day at the moment, so use it wisely The main concern is with the increased popularity of Like buttons on places such as Facebook etc, it does have a side effect of sometimes making people lazier with conversations, not bothering to properly reply to someone. Hopefully that won't happen here but we'll see how it goes!

I finally discovered the problem last night (a hidden away setting in a completely different section to the rest), but we're just weighing up the pros and cons - won't be long

The production break means the gap shortens by a couple of weeks, they usually start filming the season finale episodes around the first week of August.