"A Country Practice" Matches Trivia Quiz

Answer: Widowed

Frank's first wife, Alma, died some time before the series began. They had two children who had both moved away from Wandin Valley when they reached adulthood. Frank kept Alma's ashes in an urn on the mantelpiece which made Shirley uncomfortable, so eventually he scattered them on his roses.

Shirley's ex-husband, Jack, returned to Wandin Valley briefly but didn't stick around for long, and didn't even return for his daughter's wedding.

Answer: Standing in the back of a ute

In true soapie fashion, Vicky had to interrupt her wedding day preparations to perform emergency surgery on a horse that had been gored by a bull. Her step-father Frank brought her dress out to the farm so she could get changed after surgery and head straight to the church, but (of course) he got a flat tire. So plumber Bob arrived in his ute to save the day. The cabin was too filthy for Vicky to ride in with her wedding dress on, so instead she stood in the back making a spectacular sight as they drove through town with her veil flying in the wind.

From that point on the wedding went off without a (further) hitch. Nonetheless, don't try this at home: standing in the back of a moving ute is very dangerous and nowadays also illegal.

Answer: Peter Manning

Peter was a high school teacher who grew up in Wandin Valley. He quit his job in protest when the local parents and school board censored the students' choice of reading material. Alex took a different stance on the issue and the strain ended their engagement as Peter took a job offer in a different town while Alex decided to remain in Wandin Valley.

Answer: They were doctors in a medical practice.

Alex arrived in Wandin Valley in 1986, replacing Simon Bowen as Terence's partner in the local medical practice. A year and a half later, after her engagement to Peter Manning came and went, romance developed between the two doctors. If you want to see how their relationship turned out, you'll have to try my other "A Country Practice" quizzes!

Answer: They moved to Armidale.

Jo was still in high school when she fell in love with Michael, who was a 21 year old nurse. (He seemed so much older when I watched the show growing up but in retrospect I've decided he was practically a child himself!) Michael took a while to reciprocate her feelings, but they ended up together and married the year after Jo left school.

After the wedding they left town never to return, moving to the large NSW rural town of Armidale (a real place).

Answer: Kakadu National Park

This one was a fast-developing relationship, even by soapie standards. Cathy received a job offer to work in Kakadu just as she began seeing John Freeman (who was not a regular character). Two weeks later (in real time, anyway) he proposed, they got married, and they moved to the Northern Territory in quite the rushed exit.

Answer: Matt and Lucy

Vet Matt Tyler and nurse Lucy Gardiner became engaged in 1990. Not long afterwards their future home was destroyed in a bushfire. Then Lucy developed symptoms that made her fear she had cancer, so she called off the wedding without explanation. Eventually Matt figured out the cause of her behaviour, convinced her to seek treatment, and learned that it wasn't cancer after all. Great news! Not so fast: in fact, Lucy had contracted chlamydia from an affair in her youth, and was probably infertile as a result.

They manage to get over that obstacle, but days before the wedding Lucy's parents announced that they were splitting up, and Lucy's father wouldn't be attending the ceremony. Of course, he saw sense and showed up at the last minute to give his daughter away.

Answer: Bernice Hudson

Tom was the divorced policeman whose first wife left him to pursue a career soon after they moved to Wandin Valley. Anna was the local vet who became guardian of her 8-year-old nephew, Billy, when his parents were killed in a car crash.

Like any good soapie story, their wedding almost didn't go ahead when Anna learned that she carried the gene for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, which brought their plans for a family to a screeching halt. But obviously they decided to go ahead regardless.

Answer: Harry and Kate

For some reason I never warmed to this couple. Perhaps by this point in the series the "they pretend to hate each other" and "on again/off again" tropes were wearing pretty thin! Anyway, editorialising aside: it took Kate receiving a serious injury for them to get real, at which point they moved in together.

This really marked the series entering the 1990s; not too many years prior, flatmates Vicky and Simon had to live apart once they became engaged lest Esme Watson die of shock from the scandal!

Answer: Terence and Rosemary

Rosemary Prior was matron at the Wandin Valley hospital. She arrived in town in 1991, a year after her doctor husband was killed in Eritrea. She and Terence developed a relationship which they managed to keep secret from most of the townsfolk. While Terence wanted to marry Rosemary, she preferred to remain single and independent.

But in true soapie style, all it took was a brush with death for her to change her tune!