AustLit

Kelver Hartley, the eccentric Foundation Professor of French at the University of Newcastle, Australia, achieved local fame when he died leaving to his university a legacy valued at close to $2 million. What was most strange was that he had spent his last years living as a virtual pauper. An academic who chose to live as a recluse may seem an unlikely subject for a theatrical work, but rumours about Hartley's life abounded, and he made no attempt to dispel them, indeed encouraging them by the occasional enigmatic comment. This eccentricity itself, stemming perhaps from an inability, or unwillingness, to separate fantasy from reality, appeared to Foveaux Kirby to constitute rich material for a play drawing on all the resources of multimedia presentation. The result is by no means a conventional dramatised life story, but rather a fantasy and a puzzle boldly constructed from factual and fictional elements, including large shreds of Hartley's own creative writing.

Set in a small, fictional, New South Wales country town called Wandin Valley, A Country Practice focused on the staffs of the town's medical practice and local hospital and on the families of the doctors, nurses, and patients. Many of the episodes also featured guest characters (frequently patients served by the practice) through whom various social and medical problems were explored. Although often considered a soap opera, the series was not built around an open-ended narrative; instead, the two one-hour episodes screened per week formed a self-contained narrative block, though many of the storylines were developed as sub-plots for several episodes before becoming the focus of a particular week's storyline. While the focus was on topical issues such as youth unemployment, suicide, drug addiction, HIV/AIDS, and terminal illness, the program did sometimes explore culturally sensitive issues, including, for example, the Aboriginal community and their place in modern Australian society.

Among the show's principal characters were Dr Terence Elliott, local policeman Sergeant Frank Gilroy, Esme Watson, Shirley Dean Gilroy, Bob Hatfield, Vernon 'Cookie' Locke, and Matron Margaret 'Maggie' Sloan. In addition to its regularly rotating cast of characters, A Country Practice also had a cast of semi-regulars who would make appearances as the storylines permitted. Interestingly, while the series initially targeted the adult and older youth demographic, it became increasingly popular with children over the years.

Sons and Daughters explores the dramatic incidents in the lives of the wealthy Hamilton family and the working-class Palmer family. The premise that underpinned the show's early years concerned the character John Palmer, on the run from the Melbourne police, who suspect him of murder. He travels to Sydney and falls in love with the wealthy Angela Hamilton, but they are later revealed to be twins who were separated at birth and raised separately: John raised by the wise former prostitute Fiona Thompson before returning to live with his father and Angela raised by her mother, who subsequently married into money. More wealth later arrives through the introduction of the Morrell clan, who have managed to marry their way into the Hamilton family.