I have been enjoying some real television nostalgia over the past few nights – Return to Eden. The last time I saw this show I had just had my first baby, 24 years ago, and it is funny how it has made me relive what was a unique time in my life. There they all are in the photo – Peta Toppano, Daniel Abineri, Rebecca Gilling and James Smilie, our own version of Dynasty and pure, unadulterated cheese at it’s best. I aways thought Peta Toppano had a face that deserved to be in Hollywood films – I never met her but my dad knew her parents, Enzo and Peggy Toppano, very well and anyone who lived in Manly in the 70′s would remember they ran a theatre-restaurant called ‘The Music Loft’.

This tv series showed that Australia could do ‘glossy’ as well as the Americans and for the time it was a landmark in Australian television, these days though it is more valuable as nostalgia because when you look at the clothes, the set designs and the exterior shots of Sydney you realise you are looking down a microscope at a very different time in not only Sydney’s life but our own lives as well.

The fashion is pure 80′s; big hair – Peter Cousin’s mullet is particularly notable – lots of makeup, multi-coloured eye shadow, shoulder pads. The set designs; this is where you really notice how our lives have changed. Nobody carries a mobile phone because there were none in 1985/6, no laptops on the desks in the plush office suites, push-button intercom phones, no screens anywhere. The exterior shots of Sydney; how the face of the city has changed – no Park Hyatt hotel at The Rocks just the old terminal buildings on the waterfront, no ANA Hotel and The Regent being used as THE hotel of the time, those old office buildings at the Opera House site where there are now shops, cafes and a promenade. The Ferries are still there of course and I wonder if I am on one of those that are filmed in long shot…am I in one of those cars driving over The Bridge…?

I do know that somewhere out there, over the shoulders of those actors, is a Sydney I knew and loved and one that is very different to the Sydney of today, even though this is only 24 years ago. Somewhere, during those scenes, is a young woman who is discovering the joys of new motherhood for the very first time, whose beloved Dad is still alive, who is wondering what life will be like for her baby boy in the year 2000 but is not too bothered as it is so far away in the future…who has so many new things lying in wait for her over the following years that she could never have dreamed about. If only I could let her know that everything turns out alright…