No other Australian drama has captured our hearts quite like A Country Practice. Through its impressive run from 1981 to 1994, the characters of the fictional town of Wandin Valley became family.
Now, the iconic series has been inducted into the TV WEEK Logie Hall of Fame.
Announcing A Country Practice’s Hall of Fame induction, Logie host Robert Irwin revealed he actually has a personal connection to the program.
“It’s a program that became a cultural milestone, and not many people would know this, but I have a very strong connection to this show as well,” Robert shared.
“There were a heap of stars on this particular program, but I think the brightest star of them all was a little guy called Fatso, the wombat.”
Robert revealed that after retiring from his TV career, Fatso took up permanent residence at Australia Zoo with the Irwin family, spending the rest of his life there.
“His relatives still live there to this day,” Robert added.
A Country Practice was watched by an extraordinary eight to 10 million viewers each week at its peak. And that’s when the population of Australia was below 20 million.
The show already had a Gold Logie-winning star in Lorrae Desmond, who played nurse Shirley Gilroy, wife of Frank Gilroy (Brian Wenzel), the local police sergeant. But it made household names of Penny Cook and Grant Dodwell, who played married couple Vicky, the town vet, and Dr Simon Bowen. They became regular TV WEEK cover stars.
Anne Tenney and Shane Withington played married couple Molly and Brendan Jones. The 1985 episode in which Molly died from leukaemia while watching her family remains one of the most gut-wrenching episodes of Australian TV ever.
Also loved at the time were Shane Porteous as Dr Terence Elliott and Joyce Jacobs as town gossip Esme Watson.
Viewers grew to love Joan Sydney’s inimitable Matron Maggie Sloan, while a young Georgie Parker became a firm fan favourite for her portrayal of Lucy Gardiner when she joined in 1989.
The show was created by legendary Australian writer/producer/director James Davern, who was inducted into the Logie Hall of Fame in 1991. James started at the ABC as an electrical engineer before working his way up to be the head of television drama. After leaving the ABC, he entered a script for a show set in a rural town into a Network 10 script-writing contest. The script, then called In General Practice, won third prize.
Channel 10 rejected the concept, but James shopped it to Channel Seven. Boss Ted Thomas showed interest, so James and his wife, Philippa, started their own production company called JNP, and A Country Practice was born.
“Dad would write the scripts out and mum would type them up,” says James’ son, Pat Davern. “It was very DIY.”
According to Pat, James wanted the show, which was filmed at locations in Oakville and Pitt Town, north-west of Sydney, to not only entertain audiences but to educate them as well.
“He used to say, ‘Never underestimate the intelligence of your audience,’” Pat says. “He wanted to bring stories that could not only engage, but also make people think about their lives and the world they were living in.”
Some of the subjects the show tackled included domestic abuse, HIV/AIDS, environmental pollution and Indigenous rights. Prime Minister Bob Hawke even appeared on a 1986 episode.
“My father probably would’ve thought that was his greatest achievement – getting Bob Hawke on to the show,” Pat laughs.
Georgie Parker believes the success of the show lies in its depiction of community. “Drama would come in and out of people’s lives, but you had everyone looking out for each other and people want that in their own lives,” she tells us. “You spend a safe hour with these people where bad things can happen, but the community is still the same.”
The show’s popular non-human characters included, of course, Fatso the Wombat – according to Pat, he was notoriously difficult to work with – and Doris the Pig.
Pat found his own fame as guitarist in the enduring 1990s rock band Grinspoon and also writes music for children. He says his father, who died in 2023, aged 90, would have been thrilled with ACP’s induction into the Hall of Fame.
“He was so proud of A Country Practice,” Pat says, going on to suggest ACP could be rebooted for a modern audience in the way another iconic soap, Prisoner, reappeared as Wentworth.
“Let’s revive A Country Practice!” he says with enthusiasm. Watch this space!
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