After 37 years, nearly 9,000 episodes, 68 deaths, 63 births and plenty of street cricket, Neighbours has come to an end

Tonight the final ever episode of Neighbours airs. I’ve been lucky enough to work on the show for the past 4.5 years. In that time I’ve composed and placed music for 1108 thirty-minute episodes of television. That’s 554 hours of television.

I’ve composed the soundtrack for weddings, funerals, betrayals, declarations of love, action scenes, comedy scenes, countless arguments, murders and of course it’s a soap, so yes… there was even memory loss in there too. All in all I composed 2661 music cues.

In 2020 I was also given the opportunity to arrange what is now the final ever rendition of the Neighbours theme, sung by Bonnie Anderson.

Since working on the show I’ve been impressed by the inclusivity of the storylines. I know for most of the show’s life it was very white, but in recent years they’ve worked hard to get the show to actually reflect multicultural Melbourne. My time on the show saw regular characters from many different ethnic backgrounds, indigenous characters, characters with a disability, gay, lesbian, bisexual, non-binary, trans and polyamorous characters. The thing I loved about their inclusion was that the character’s sexuality or ethnicity wasn’t the main feature of the storyline. It was a part of who that character was, but it didn’t define their story and as a result if just felt very natural.

My time on the show was very much an all consuming one. In the beginning I worked 100 hour weeks just to get the job done composing for 6 episodes a week. As time moved on I found ways to improve my work flow and built up a library of tracks I could re-use and repurpose for different scenes. Finally after about a year, I was able to get it down to close to the 50 hours a week that I was actually rostered on for.

Needless to say I could not have got it done if it wasn’t for the constant encouragement and understanding of my wonderful partner Natasha. She has always been supportive and remarkably also actively encouraged me to continue working on my orchestral projects (on top of my Neighbours work!) Thank you lovely.

Another special mention to Judith Robbins who meticulously helped me out each week to deliver my music cue sheets for each episode.

Neighbours is an Australian icon and it’s departure is going to leave a massive hole in the industry. I learnt so much working on the show and I am honoured to have composed music for tonight’s finale.

The 90 minute Neighbours finale airs tonight on Channel 10 at 7:30.