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Bellbird (soap Opera)
Bellbird is an Australian soap opera serial broadcast by the ABC created and co-written by Barbara Vernon, it screened for 10 seasons between 1967 and 1977, and spanned 1,697 episodes. The series centered around the residents of the small fictional Victorian rural township of the series title. Bellbird has the distinction of being the longest-running soap opera/serial ever produced by the ABC. It ended the same year as commercial broadcast series '' Number 96'' and '' The Box'', which had run for six and four years respectively. Production and broadcasting The series was produced by the ABC at the Ripponlea Studios in Melbourne, with the opening titles filmed at nearby Daylesford. Bellbird screened from 28 August 1967 to 23 December 1977 and although it was not Australia's first television serial (the first was Network Seven's ''Autumn Affair''), it was the first successful soap opera and even spawned a feature film and tie-in novel. The show's ratings were modest but it ha ...
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Soap Opera
A soap opera (also called a daytime drama or soap) is a genre of a long-running radio or television Serial (radio and television), serial, frequently characterized by melodrama, ensemble casts, and sentimentality. The term ''soap opera'' originated from radio dramas originally being sponsored by soap manufacturers.Bowles, p. 118. The term was preceded by ''horse opera'', a derogatory term for low-budget Western (genre), Westerns. According to some dictionaries, for something to be adequately described as a soap opera, it need not be long-running; but some authors define the word in a way that excludes short-running serial dramas from their definition. BBC Radio's ''The Archers'', first Broadcasting, broadcast in 1950, is the world's longest-running soap opera. The longest-running television soap opera is ''Coronation Street'', which was first broadcast on ITV (TV network), ITV in 1960. According to Albert Moran, one of the defining features that make a television program a soap ...
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Blue Hills (radio Serial)
''Blue Hills'' was an Australian radio serial that was broadcast by the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) for 27 years, from 28 February 1949 to 30 September 1976. It ran for a total of 5,795 episodes, and was at one time the world's longest-running radio serials. Each episode lasted 15 minutes. Created and written by Gwen Meredith, the series focuses on families who reside in a typical Australian country town, called "Tanimbla". The series title itself related to the residence of Dr. Gordon, the local G.P. Blue Hills succeeded another Gwen Meredith serial '' The Lawsons'', with many of the same themes and characters, and which ran for 1,299 episodes. History: background Blue Hills followed an earlier similar style series written by Gwen Meredith called '' The Lawsons'', which was the brainchild of play editor Leslie Rees and Frank Clewlow of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (then Commission), which had been approached by Government in 1943 to public ...
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Bruce Barry (actor)
Bruce Alaric Barry (24 October 193420 April 2017 (6 May 2017 is also mentioned as a death date in one source)Obituaries in the Performing Arts 2017
Retrieved 12 January 2019
) was an Australian stage, television and film actor, and singer.


Early life and career

Bruce Barry was born the son of a teacher in , , and grew up in .Philip O'Brien, "Barry happy to per ...
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Newspapers
A newspaper is a Periodical literature, periodical publication containing written News, information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sports, art, and science. They often include materials such as opinion columns, weather forecasts, reviews of local services, Obituary, obituaries, birth notices, crosswords, editorial cartoons, comic strips, and advice columns. Most newspapers are businesses, and they pay their expenses with a mixture of Subscription business model, subscription revenue, Newsagent's shop, newsstand sales, and advertising revenue. The journalism organizations that publish newspapers are themselves often Metonymy, metonymically called newspapers. Newspapers have traditionally been published Printing, in print (usually on cheap, low-grade paper called newsprint). However, today most newspapers are also Electronic publishing, published on webs ...
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The Sydney Morning Herald
''The Sydney Morning Herald'' (''SMH'') is a daily Tabloid (newspaper format), tabloid newspaper published in Sydney, Australia, and owned by Nine Entertainment. Founded in 1831 as the ''Sydney Herald'', the ''Herald'' is the oldest continuously published newspaper in Australia and claims to be the most widely read masthead in the country. It is considered a newspaper of record for Australia. The newspaper is published in Compact (newspaper), compact print form from Monday to Saturday as ''The Sydney Morning Herald'' and on Sunday as its sister newspaper, ''The Sun-Herald'' and digitally as an Website, online site and Mobile app, app, seven days a week. The print edition of ''The Sydney Morning Herald'' is available for purchase from many retail outlets throughout the Sydney metropolitan area, most parts of regional New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory and South East Queensland. Overview ''The Sydney Morning Herald'' publishes a variety of supplements, including ...
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Briony Behets
Briony Behets (born 1951) is an English-born Australian actress who found fame acting in television soap operas of the 1970s and 1980s. She is known for her early roles in '' Birds in the Bush'', '' Number 96'', '' The Box'', '' Bellbird'', and '' Class of '75''. Behets was also a weather presenter on ATV-10 Melbourne's news bulletins during the mid-1970s. She received an AFI Award nomination for her role in '' The Trespassers'' (1976), and starred in telemovie '' Skin Deep'' in 1984. Later roles include Eve Cambridge in '' Possession'', Amanda Harris in ''Neighbours'', which she reprised in 2025, Margaret Bennett in '' E Street'', Diana Stevens in British soap opera ''Families'', and Elizabeth Regnery in '' The Saddle Club''. Early and personal life Behets was born in London, United Kingdom in 1951. Her father worked as a civil engineer, which took him around the world and as a result much of Behets' childhood was spent in Germany and Sierra Leone before returning to England. ...
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Brian James (actor)
Brian James (5 July 1918 – 2 November 2009) was an Australian radio, stage, television and film actor. Early life and theatre Brian James was born in Melbourne, the son of the Bishop of St. Arnaud and started his career as a teacher at Ivanhoe Grammar School for four years, in 1933 joining the Royal Australian Navy, after which he was demobilised five years later, and decided to pursue a career as an actor, attending Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London, making his stage debut in 1947 and he featured in the 1952 J.C. Williamson production of '' Seagulls Over Sorrento''. He would also appear in the 1960 TV production of the play. Television and film According to screenwriter Richard Lane "in that first decade of television it seemed that Brian James was everywhere." James appeared in several ABC drama plays in the late 1950s, including ''Duke In Darkness'' and '' Killer in Close-Up: The Wallace Case'' in 1957, '' Gaslight'', ''The Small Victory'', ''The Publi ...
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Bob Maza
Robert Lewis Maza (25 November 1939 – 14 May 2000), known as Bob Maza, was an Aboriginal Australian actor, playwright and activist. Early life and education Robert Lewis Maza was born on Palm Island in North Queensland on 25 November 1939, to a Murray Islander (Torres Strait Islander) father and to a Yidindji (Australian Aboriginal) mother.Bob Maza
on the website of the
He was one of the first Aboriginal children in northern Queensland to complete secondary schooling, and described feelings of alienation and being caught between two cultures as a teenager. After finishing school in

Anne Scott-Pendlebury
Anne Scott-Pendlebury (also known as Anne Pendlebury) is an Australian television, film and theatre actress. She plays the role of Hilary Robinson in the soap opera ''Neighbours''. Career Scott-Pendlebury is the daughter of L. Scott Pendlebury and Eleanor "Nornie" Gude; both were artists. She is the sister of Andrew Pendlebury, a musician. Scott-Pendlebury began her career working in theatre with the Melbourne Theatre Company. In 1970, she took the role of Ariel in the Victorian Shakespeare Company production of ''The Tempest''. In 1983, Scott-Pendlebury played Hermione in ''The Winter's Tale'' and Natasha in ''The Three Sisters''. In 1984, she continued her work with the Melbourne Theatre Company, playing a secretary role in the play ''Candida Candida, or Cándida (Spanish), may refer to: Biology and medicine * ''Candida'' (fungus), a genus of yeasts ** Candidiasis, an infection by ''Candida'' organisms * Malvasia Candida, a variety of grape Places * Candida, Cam ...
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Anne Phelan
Anne Mary Phelan (2 August 1948 – 27 October 2019) was an Australian actress of stage and screen who appeared in many theatre, television and film productions as well as radio and voice-over. Her television soap opera roles she was likely best known internationally for her role as prison inmate and top dog Myra Desmond in ''Prisoner'' (1980–1985), post-Prisoner she appeared in the 1988 miniseries ''Poor Man's Orange'' in which she won the 1988 AFL Award. Phelan won the AACTA Award for Best Lead Actress in a Television Drama in 2000 for her role in the ABC series '' Something n the Air'' as Monica Taylor. She was awarded the Equity Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016. She was an activist for humanitarian causes. Early life Phelan was raised in Fitzroy, Victoria. She was reported as saying that she had no formal study or qualifications for acting or singing, but instead had trained through 15 years work in amateur theatre. At age 16, she became pregnant and gave her daug ...
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Anne Lucas
Mary Anne Elizabeth Lucas (born ) billed also as Annie Lucas, is an Australian actress and TV screenwriter and script editor, best known for her roles on television including ''Bellbird (TV series), Bellbird'' as Glenda Chan, ''The Young Doctors'' from 1977 to 1980 as Eve Turner (Steele) and in ''Prisoner (TV series), Prisoner'' for two stints in 1982 and 1983 as prison bookie Faye Quinn.Anne's early career was in theatre where she worked with companies in all Australian states and with prominent UK performers including Eric Sykes,Jimmy Edwards,Patrick Cargill and Harry H Corbett. Her television screenplays have been nominated for awards on multiple occasions. Personal life Lucas was born in July 1946 in Johor, Malaysia to a father of half Burmese and Irish descent and a mother of half Malay and English descent She is married to English-Australian Prisoner producer Ian Bradley (born Bath, Somerset, England, ), Bradley was the original producer during season 1 They have a son, ...
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Anne Charleston
Anne Charleston (born 30 December 1942) is an Australian-born former actress prominent in television, radio and theatre, notable for her career locally and in the United Kingdom in both England and Ireland. She began her career on the stage in the mid-1950s before moving onto the small screen in the early 1960s, appearing in various telefilms and series including several guest roles on various series by Crawford Productions. She had recurring roles in local soap opera's including the ABC series '' Bellbird'', '' Class of 74'' and briefly '' Number 96''. Charleston became known for her work in the cult classic series ''Prisoner'', in which she played three different characters between 1979 and 1984. Charleston is best known for her television roles in soap opera's including ''Neighbours'', as matriarch Madge Bishop (1986–1992; 1996–2001, 2015, 2022), opposite co-star Ian Smith then Agnes Adair in 2025, and the British soap ''Emmerdale'', playing Lily Butterfield (2006 ...
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