Characters

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  Julie Rafter

  Rebecca Gibney

  Pragmatic, feisty, lively and fun, Julie is a terrific mum, a loving daughter, a wonderful wife, and a great worker. She rightly has faith in her organisational skills – which have made her such a valued asset at Barrett’s Electrical Services – but any interest she might have had outside work, home and family have had to take a back seat. She’s always been far too busy taking care of everyone else to worry about herself.  Julie’s three kids – Rachel, Ben and Nathan – have always occupied centre stage in her life, even as they have moved out of home to make their own way. So when it’s the turn of Ben, her middle child, to announce that he’s finally taken Dad’s less-than-subtle hints to leave home, she is naturally sad to see the end of an era. Another part of her, however, is secretly turning cartwheels. Perhaps the third phase of her life, the me-phase, is about to begin and Julie can’t wait! It’s unfortunate timing that the life revolution offered by Ben’s departure coincides with dramatic crises in the lives of her two other kids and her father Ted. When they all move in, Julie finds herself re-cast in the role of cook, cleaner, washer-woman, general dogs-body and all-purpose sounding board. This combined with the financial burden imposed by Dave’s sudden joblessness, sparks in Julie a scary sense of the grinding treadmill of life – and generates a crisis of her own. Julie becomes painfully aware that she’s hurtling towards the end-phase of her life and it’s a difficult adjustment, fraught with fear, resentment and no small measure of anger. At the start of the series we meet Julie on the eve of her 25th wedding anniversary to Dave – the love of her life. They laugh together, a lot, rarely set sun on an argument and still enjoy a terrific sex-life. But it hasn’t always been smooth sailing. A few months into their relationship, Julie discovered she was pregnant with Rachel. Dave immediately proposed marriage, but Julie chose to make him wait. She wanted to know that Dave was marrying her for herself, not out of duty.
  Dave gave up his musical ambitions to be with her and raise a family. And now 25 years, they face a new set of challenges. But throughout the ups and downs, Julie maintains her wicked sense of humour, and an unflinching love for her family.

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  Dave Rafter

  Erik Thomson

  Dave is a hard-working, fun-loving, thoroughly decent, salt-of-the-earth bloke with a passion for sport, eighties music, his wife and family. He and his wife Julie work together at a small firm of electricians. She as a book-keeper and he as their longest serving and most experienced sparkie. He’s loved his wife from the moment he set eyes on her, 26 years ago at a test match at the SCG. She came as a date for a mate of his, but the mate scarcely got a look-in.
  It was a strong, immediate chemistry – a heady mix of common-life goals, humour and sexual attraction – which saw them married less than one year later in a suburban registry office, already the parents of a daughter Rachel. Two more kids and Dave had completed the family he’d always craved. As a child Dave was given up by his birth parents (who he’s never known and never wanted to) and fostered out to a series of foster families. It was at the last of these, between the formative ages of 13 and 16, that Dave met and became best mates, almost brothers with a slightly older foster-kid called Steve Wilson. Together they formed a garage band, scrimping and saving for the necessary equipment, and writing songs. But then Dave met Julie, and his life changed forever. Fearing he would lose the chance to be a father, Dave chose to opt out of the band and dedicate himself to completing his apprenticeship as an electrician. After almost 25 years of marriage, Dave is in the prime of his life. A job he loves, three great kids, a comfortable home, and a place in the local social cricket team. The prospect of a life less clustered with kids is only the icing on the proverbial cake. But his mid-life security is completely overturned, when his boss of 24 years asks him to re-apply for his own job, offering a part-time wage for basically a full-time commitment. His pride on the line, he tells his boss he can stick his job, making his wife their major bread-winner.

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  Ted Taylor

  Michael Caton

  A quintessential Aussie bloke, with outspoken opinions on everything, Ted is a very well-preserved man in his mid-60s.
  Just over a year ago, he took early retirement from his job at a local building society to enjoy the fruits of years of hard work and the company of his beloved wife Louise. They bought and refurbished a clapped out old campervan, but tragically on the day of their grandson Nathan’s wedding and just a few short months into their long-planned odyssey around Australia, Louise suffered a massive and fatal coronary. Her death has left a gaping void at the centre of his life. Ted has soldered on, sublimating a lot of his pain, trimly keeping up appearances, but it’s clear to all around him, especially his daughter Julie, that the sun has gone out of his life. His grandkids have noticed it, too. The fun grandad, the one who was always up for a practical joke, or a game of backyard cricket, doesn’t make himself anywhere near as available as he used to. A clue to how deeply the loss of his wife has affected Ted comes when he starts – in a sense to be nearer to her – wearing his wife’s clothes. It’s all fine in the privacy of his own home, but mortifying when he suffers a minor heart attack and is hospitalised, in full view of the gawping residents of his retirement village, actually dressed in one of Louise’s dresses! At the hospital, he tells his daughter about how the aching loneliness found brief relief when one afternoon he came across Louise’s untouched clothes still hanging in their wardrobe, her perfume vividly transporting him to happier times. Too ashamed to go home, he’s invited by Julie to recuperate at her place. The shame and humiliation are enough to push Ted to consider giving up on life entirely.

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  Rachel Rafter

  Jessica Marais

  Rachel, 25, is the eldest of the three Rafter children. Sassy, creative and clever, she’s always been the apple of her father’s eye.
  Rachel left the Rafter home at 18 to move into a shared house with students in her graphics design course. She was always the good girl and, even at that stage of first experimentation, drugs and alcohol never appealed to her. It was more the need for independence and to escape what she saw as the over-protection of mum and dad.
  It was only really when she fell for sexy young freelance account-executive Daniel Griggs that she took her first real excursions into long nights of booze and drug use.
  They met at the boutique ad agency she joined as a graphic artist. And for a time things were fantastic. Rachel couldn’t wait to tell her mother all about the amazing man she met. And he was an instant hit with the entire family. They were young and had the powers of recovery required when you’re burning the candle at both ends.
  But after they moved in together, things slowly started to sour. We first meet Rachel at a delicate point in her life; her relationship with Daniel has clearly hit rock-bottom. Her parents can sense something is wrong, particularly with him, but they can’t quite put their finger on it. Their intuition is spot on when it’s later revealed he has an ice addiction.

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  Ben Rafter

  Hugh Sheridan

  Ben, 23, is the middle of the Rafter kids. Cute in a goofy sort of way, he still doesn't have any real sense of his place in the world or even what he’d potentially like his place to be. Not that money seems to be too much of a problem. He works four shifts at the local Boat Club bar, but is also – unbeknownst to his parents – on the dole.
  Picking up finally on his dad’s on-going barrage of less-than-subtle hints, Ben decides it probably is time he got his own place, but takes the less-stress half-measure of moving in with his mate Carbo next door. Not that the process of finding his own place is beyond Ben. He’s got the smarts, at least the street-smarts, but the thought of moving too far away from home-cooking and home-laundry is too burdensome to contemplate at this stage of life.
  Easy-going Ben never fails to pick up because he never targets a girl he knows he can’t get. The thought of being involved with a girl for longer than one uncomplicated night has never appealed – the last thing he wants is to be pinned down in his early 20s like both his father and Nathan.
  But when nurse Melissa joins him and Carbo in the house, he’s immediately attracted to her but will he get the girl?

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  Nathan Rafter

  Angus McLaren

  Nathan, 21, is the youngest of the Rafter children. He’s smooth, charming, good-looking but is more a creature of logic and process than of feeling and intuition.
  Despite his flaws, he’s Julie’s favourite and the one she’s prepared to forgive more than the others.
  From an early age, Nathan knew what he wanted – lots of money and a big house far from the suburbia in which he grew up.
  He’s not exactly ashamed of his parents. He loves them, but he just doesn’t want to end up like them.
  That’s why, after striking a deal with them to go halves in a scholarship to a private school and scoring well in his high school certificate, he didn’t even consider the option of higher education. It was on with the sharp suits and cufflinks and straight into real estate. Nathan left home, moved to the inner city and geared himself to the hilt to create a façade that would sell him to the world.

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  Sammy Rafter

  Jessica McNamee

  The sexy, outgoing, irrepressible only-daughter of wealthy property developer, Anthony Westaway, Sammy is undeniably a princess - beautiful, assured, well-dressed. But unlike many princesses from similarly affluent backgrounds, “spoiled” is one adjective you could never apply to her. Perhaps because she’s always had everything money can buy, Sammy values possessions less, except maybe when it comes to shoes. She knows that she and Nathan look great when they go out together, that they wear each other like expensive accessories, but the truth is she loves her husband for the private times, the jokes they share. Nathan has never allowed himself to let his guard down or been more open with anyone in his life than with her. Her insistence on honesty and openness has been the ongoing strength of their bond.
  But it’s not only Nathan who Sammy’s been able to disarm. Her straightforward, confident nature ultimately endears her to everyone. She’s never prying, judging or manipulating and is always ready to offer a sympathetic ear. But she also has a streak of stubbornness and independence. With a father as career-driven and singled-minded as hers, and the example of a mother who’s nothing more than a well-groomed door-mat, Sammy has learnt from a young age to stand up for herself.

   

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  Melissa Bannon

  Zoe Ventoura

  Melissa Bannon, 26, is an attractive, plain-speaking nurse with a mysterious past.
  Originally from Perth, she moves next door to the Rafters with their middle son Ben and his best mate Nick ‘Carbo’ Karandonis. The pair seem to think a female flatmate will take care of the cleaning and household chores. But they soon learn Melissa is far from the domestic goddess they had hoped for.
  But she’s very easy on the eye, so they’re willing to let her messiness slide. Both men are powerfully attracted to her but Carbo has set a household rule: no sleeping with flatmates!

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  Nick 'Carbo' Karandonis

  George Houvardas

  Nick ‘Carbo’ Karandonis loves his food, and is crazy about cars, so who knows where the nickname came from – carburettors or carbohydrates? Whatever the derivation of his name, as the only son of a loving family of third-generation Greek immigrants, Carbo can pretty much do no wrong.