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Death of Noeline Donaher went unreported

Sylvania Waters star who eventually wanted nothing to do with fame, finally got her wish...

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The death of former Reality TV star Noeline Donaher, best known for Sylvania Waters, appears to have gone unreported, following her death in May 2023.

Sylvania Waters was a notorious, if pioneering, reality show co-produced by the BBC and ABC principally made for a British audience already hooked on Neighbours.

In 1992 a call went out for a “lively family” who lived in the southern Sydney suburb of Sylvania Waters with an extended family that fit the bill.

The Donaher family signed on and camera crews began to film their every move. The shoot lasted for five months; over a hundred hours of footage was collected and then edited into twelve episodes, in what would become an early version of Reality TV’s own ‘bad edit.’

Sylvania Waters exploded on to Australian TV on 21 July 1992. The link to the soap that inspired it was clear in the tagline: “Could these be your Neighbours?” Aussie critics immediately fired up, with the Daily Telegraph writing it was “a vicious putdown tailor-made for British audiences”.

The Sydney Morning Herald agreed, arguing the doco was pandering to “every British preconception about Aussies” with a family that was “materialistic, argumentative and heavy-drinking”. Unsurprisingly, Sylvania Waters attracted a huge audience and the morning after it aired everyone seemed to have an opinion on it.

Matriarch Noeline was rarely seen without her beloved Winfield Red cigarettes, or a bourbon in hand, described as a “racist, drunk, crass blonde”.

Such was the press for the edited show that Noeline tried to fight back, doing endless talkshows and writing her own book, The Sylvania Waters Diary. She even released a single, “No Regrets” before turning her back on the spotlight.

In the end she got her wish of no longer attracting the press…

Source: Twitter, The Guardian

5 Responses

  1. Likewise, Jeannette Charles (played the Queen in various UK comedy shows like “The Goodies” & Spike Milligan’s “Q” series, and movies such as “National Lampoon’s European Vacation” & “Austin Powers 3”) and Greg “Space Gandalf” Quicke (ABC/BBC “Stargazing Live” & an occasional commentator / subject on ABC TV) both passed away recently without comment.

  3. I remember watching it with my mum….it was like the precursor to The Osbournes….The Kardashians…..only the less posh end of the scale…then like all these family related shows….it turned into a soap opera…but at the time it was great fly on the wall stuff…just to see how the other half lived…and fought…like all families…60 Minutes with Charles Woodley did an interview with the family on how they were treated after the show.. and Noeline was true to herself if nothing else on the interview…

  4. Never watched a second of it – but I know of the historical importance she had on Australian landscape – a shame that nobody seemed to care.

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