Exclusive pics of Alf and Martha’s wedding
Having killed off two much-loved characters in recent weeks, Home And Away is finally set for some happiness, as it sends one of its most eligible bachelors down the aisle.
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Having killed off two much-loved characters in recent weeks, Home And Away is finally set for some happiness, as it sends one of its most eligible bachelors down the aisle.
Mason (Orpheus Pledger) was shot dead during a hospital siege at the conclusion of last season and Robbo (Jake Ryan) was killed after a car accident tied to the same dramatic event as the popular soap kicked for 2020.
And after so much heartbreak in the tiny coastal town, there’s nothing like a good wedding to refocus everyone’s attention — especially when the groom is none other than Summer Bay favourite and original resident Alf Stewart.
Of course it wouldn’t be an Australian soapie wedding without a fair dose of its own drama, which we saw this week when Alf’s bride-to-be Martha initially knocks his proposal back. Strewth!
It looks like things are back on track when Martha is convinced Alf isn’t just trying to fix a horrible situation with an impromptu wedding, but there’s still time for things to go pear-shaped.
Ray Meagher, who is famous the world over for playing Alf since the show began in 1998, tied the knot with his real life wife Gilly a decade ago and thankfully didn’t run into the same roadblock his character did.
The two had both been married before and weren’t too concerned about rushing into anything until they were both ready and when they did it was as simple and perfect as they wanted it to be.
“I don’t think we had a proposal sort of scenario,” Meagher tells Insider.
“I think Gilly always knew I was up for it if that’s what she wanted to do. We’d both been there before and we’d been together at that stage for six or seven years.
He continues at considerable risk to his marriage: “She’ll kill me for saying this — she thought if we were going to get married it would be nice to do it before she turns 60. And there goes the marriage,” he laughs.
There was no fancy proposal, no expensive elaborate wedding. But there was a surprise, just not for them.
“We didn’t have any big carry-on, we didn’t tell anybody, we just got the two people who were mates of both of ours, who introduced us, to come down and be witnesses,” he says.
“We didn’t even tell them. We invited them down to stay with us for the weekend and told them we wanted them to come down and stay with us because we wanted them to see a show.
“With the four of us at our celebration, Gilly did the catering — it was a cheese plate and a bottle of champagne and then we went down to a really nice restaurant and let them do the fair dinkum catering.”
It’s a scenario many would die for when it comes to wedding planning. But a marriage involving the boldest personality in Summer Bay wasn’t going to be so simple. Not least because the drama in this relationship started three decades ago.
While the current love affair between Alf and Belinda Giblin’s Martha is relatively new in Home And Away years, its genesis actually pre-dates the show’s earliest episodes.
The legend of Martha was introduced to original audiences in flashbacks (played by Alison Mulvaney) as Alf’s late wife who drowned, leaving a grieving husband and daughter Roo (Georgie Parker now, Justine Clarke then).
So things got a little crazy in the Bay when Martha appeared to come back from the dead when she showed up again in 2018. It turned out she had faked her own death to spare her family the debilitating mental illness she was suffering at the time.
“When she disappeared I don’t think medicine was far enough advanced to diagnose or — certainly not to treat her adequately all those years ago, and she would have just been referred to as a bit of a mad woman I suppose, unfairly,” Meagher says. “Now there are all sorts of medications and treatments to deal with the problems that she had and she’s on that medication and travelling extremely well.”
Meagher believes Martha’s storyline brings to the forefront topics that may not have been discussed as freely back in the show’s early days.
He’s proud that it has contributed to shining a light on something as important as mental illness.
“It does highlight some of the problems that people have suffered with for a long, long time and maybe even now are not seeking help or not realising that there is treatment that could help them if they want help,” he says.
* Home And Away screens weeknights on Seven