A flood of memories came back for Campbelltown legal eagle Patrick Duffy when he got an email telling him Seven+ was going to stream every episode of A Country Practice, an iconic Australian soap that ran from 1981 to 1993.
He says he straight away went looking for the episode filmed at the Campbelltown Picnic races at Appin.
“I remember the day well. We waited weeks if not months for it to air and I remember the whole family gathered round the little TV and I tried taking pictures of the screen when we thought we saw my sister as I had engineered her being in a shot because she loved the show more than the rest of us,’’ says Patrick, who was 11 years old at the time (pictured above in a photo he supplied to the South West Voice).
“The pictures weren’t great to say the least, but she got a picture posed with the Frank Gilroy and Bob Hatfield characters.’’
Duffy, who is aged in his 50s now and is the principal of Duffy Law Group, remembers the event as big news in the town.
“It’s the 1982 Appin picnic races and there was a crowd of over 10,000,’’ he recalls.
“The episode is called ‘cup fever’ and the plot was about the Burrigan Cup.
“The whole episode is an amazing time capsule of the town then – anyone who remembers attending or who lived in Campbelltown or Appin.’’
Duffy says the picnic races were last actually held at Appin on November 9, 1985, and were washed out in 1986-89, then cancelled.
“The course by the 1980s was too dangerous as it was a rough track and the turns too sharp for the bigger, faster modern horses,’’ he says.
“A jockey was killed in the early 80s there when his horse clipped a turn fence. The past really is another country where people did things differently.’’
For anyone who would like to see it, it’s episode 92 of series 2.
As for Patrick Duffy, we had one question for him: what was the story with the hat he was wearing?
“I well remember the shorts and shirt but the hat not at all. I reckon it was Dad’s and he made me wear it as a condition of getting out of the Valiant in lieu of sunscreen.’’
