Sydney Bushfires destroy Home and Away Caravan Park

[Natty]

A sad sad sad day in Australian TV history with the Sydney bushfires destroying the beloved Sutherland (although they're not really a fave family of mine who deserve to be smacked every single one of them) home and caravan park.

 

Actually I know no one except maybe the UK people will have any idea what I'm talking about so I'll just show you

 

Fire destroys Home and Away set

 

05dec02

 

IN a bizarre case of life imitating art, the bushfires ravaging NSW have destroyed the central set for the popular television series Home and Away.

 

Ironically, the show's producers had planned to finish the season with a cliffhanger about a bushfire ripping through the fictitious town of Summer Bay.

But they decided against the idea, instead finishing the Channel 7 soapie's current series last Friday with a different finale.

 

Executive Producer John Holmes said fires destroyed bushland on the Jackaroo Ranch at Annangrove, in Sydney's north-west.

 

The location has been used for 15 years to film some of the soapie's main scenes.

 

"The original series started with the Fletcher house, and they had a caravan park attached, which was the whole purpose of coming to Summer Bay - to set up and run the (fictitious) caravan park," he told AAP.

 

"Apparently there is (now) nothing remaining of the caravan park, because the bush is all burnt.

 

"The house is a stone house, but (apparently) the roof had collapsed and parts of the wall and some of the verandah had all gone."

 

Mr Holmes said the house was so badly damaged it would probably have to be knocked down and rebuilt.

 

No-one was hurt but caravans, mobile homes and equipment on the site were destroyed, he said.

 

By coincidence, writers and producers had earlier this year discussed the possibility of a bushfire scenario to end the season.

 

"Ironically, we had discussed writing an end-of-year cliffhanger for this year about a bushfire," he said.

 

"We figured given the bushfires we had last year in Sydney it was sort of a topical idea, but as it is we went away from that idea.

 

"But I wouldn't rule it out (in the future)."

 

Home and Away is shot about four or five months ahead of time but Mr Holmes said storylines about a bushfire could feature sometime next year.

 

"It might well be that the bushfires do come through Summer Bay at some time," he said.

 

Camera crews had been sent to the site to film its smouldering ruins in case the decision was made to proceed with the fire scenario.

 

Mr Holmes said he still had stock footage of the house, home to three families over the 15-year life of the show, and the caravan park could be recreated in the short term.

 

"We will have to shoot around either what's left and if we can't do that, we would just have to rewrite things until we work out what we're going to do with the story plot," he said.

 

Home and Away returns to Australian screens early in the new year.

 

 

 

 

A picture can be found here- in pdf format http://www.newspix.com.au/aus/20021205.PDF