Bluey to Mr G: Could your favourite TV characters afford their homes today?

Drama teacher Mr Greg Gregson, aka Mr G, of Summer Heights High may have got experimental and crazy in the classroom but in reality, he would have never been able to hand in his letter of resignation and tell the school principal, Margaret, “there’s some flowers from my dead dog, why don’t you stick those up your fat arse”.

On the current average Sydney drama teacher salary of around $100,000 – $110,000, a unit today in Sydney’s inner west suburb of Summer Hill would cost him around $902,000.

That’s a steep price to repay on a single wage. In reality, Mr G couldn’t afford to quit – he would definitely be sticking around for more interpretative movement and to advocate for the Gregson Performing Arts Centre.

Over the years, our hit TV shows have entertained and educated us, as well as audiences around the world, about the much-revered Australian lifestyle. But how realistic would some of the characters and their living arrangements be in today’s high-priced, high-interest-rate and housing crisis era?

When ditzy hairdresser Marilyn Chambers reappeared in Home and Away’s Summer Bay after a break of nine years, she must have won lotto in the interim.

For on her salary – and the fact she seems to spend so little time actually at work – how else could she have afforded a place to live in a little bougie seaside suburb that so closely resembles Sydney’s Palm Beach? 

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After all, property there has a median price of $2.55 million, according to Domain research, while a hairdresser who worked full-time would earn $60,000 to $80,000, according to figures from seek.com.au; absolutely nothing like enough.

“Watching the show, I don’t know how she has the money to pay for groceries, let alone buy a place there, or pay rent,” says Australian TV and film pop culture specialist Andrew Mercado.

“It’s the same with Alf Stewart, who owns the bait shop and wouldn’t turn over much money. He did have the corner store for a while, and works behind the bar, but still wouldn’t make much from that either. And there doesn’t seem to be much social and affordable housing in Summer Bay …”

Take Neighbours, another Aussie classic, that’s now been running for 39 years, albeit with a small break when it was cancelled by the BBC and then resumed in a fresh deal with Amazon Freevee.

Its characters all live around Ramsay Street, a cul-de-sac based on the real-life Pin Oak Court in Vermont South in Melbourne’s east. There, the median price of a house is $1,505,000. 

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Happily, some of the characters could indeed afford to live there if they were buying today, like Dr Karl Kennedy, who’s a GP on an average income of $210,000 to $230,000, or Jarrod ‘Toadfish’ Rebecchi, a lawyer who’s just left the series, but would have been earning something in the realm of $115,000. 

But the rest of the bunch? In real life, many of them would have to live a great deal further out and face a long commute every day, or be sleeping in their cars parked on Ramsay Street.  

Yet one of the biggest mysteries in Australian TV remains how Bluey’s dad, Bandit, could possibly make enough dog bikkies to pay the mortgage on his lovely Queenslander.

Bandit has a respectable career as an archaeologist, but according to seek.com.au, they average only $85,000 – $95,000 per annum and, with his home set in Brisbane’s lovely Paddington, he’d have to bark up quite a bit for that $1.9 million median.

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“Perhaps it’s been handed down by his parents, though,” says Mercado. “He might have relied on the bank of mum and dad like so many other youngsters today. That’s the only way we could explain it.”

There’s similar mystery surrounding the characters of comedy Kath & Kim of Melbourne’s Fountain Lakes, resembling a suburb like Patterson Lakes, 35 kilometres south east of the CBD, with a median of $1,229,000.

Kath, a suburban housewife who occasionally and unsuccessfully moonlights as a real estate agent, drinks “Kardonnay” and spends vast amounts on fabulous fashion whilst helping support waster daughter Kim, mainly relies on the income of her butcher husband Kel, who would average $65,000 to $80,000 from his shop, according to seek.com.au.

Although he’s won some awards for his sausages, that’d be nowhere near enough to keep up the mortgage repayments in today’s money.

Then there’s original Blue Heelers star senior constable Maggie Doyle who, on a humble police officer’s salary of $95,000 could still seem to afford a home in Melbourne’s south-west Williamstown, with a median price of $1,545,000. That does seem to cast a new light on her character.

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Obstetrician Nina Proudman, however, from Offspring, on the average salary of $220,000-$240,000 according to seek.com.au, would comfortably keep her head above water in Melbourne’s Fitzroy today with its median of $1.59 million.

Tess Ryan’s financial struggles, meanwhile, in McLeod’s Daughters, provided much of the drama of the show, with a sheep farm probably worth around $600,000 in Freeling, South Australia.

“Certainly, many of the characters might not really have been able to afford to live in the areas we see them living in,” said Debbie Donnelley of PPD Real Estate. “But I think viewers are sensible enough to know their locations and living arrangements are a bit of a set-up for a TV show, and don’t take it too seriously.”