This is my Holden/Jack/Tony/Martha picspam of recently incurred obsessive mourning and joy.

It is very hard to find images to work with out there and I know that this is rather unhealthy, but it must be exorcised!

That is all.





At a party Tash and Robbie attempted to set-up Martha with two randoms. Things did not end well and with the words "I'm sure when the time's right, the perfect guy will just walk through the door" we got this


After an episode or so of seeing this mysterious new copper get on Martha's nerves (for no apparent reason other than to push the point that she does not like him and thus is intensely attracted to him) we find out that he is the eldest son of Beth Hunter & Brood's new neighbour- Tony Holden. He and his two sons Lucas and Jack the Copper have moved to the Bay. But not all is sunny with them...

Jon Sivewright and Paul O'Brien


Rhys Wakefield and Paul O'Brien.


Jack, Tony and Lucas Holden. Bereft of their wife and mother, Katy who was killed by a hit and run driver when Lucas was a baby.

Apart from the above there are really no pictures of the three of them together, much less of the three of them together on screen. But they breezed into Summer Bay as one blatantly contrived threesome of bachelors who matched up perfectly to three lonely female counterparts. Perfect. We found out that they were on the run from a vengeful father who was out to disrupt the policeman's life after Jack had shot Harry Chamber's teenage daughter in self defence. After nearly being hounded out of Summer Bay Tony stood up for Jack in a gorgeous scene, which underwrites just how much he loves and will protect his sons.

Onto Jack and Martha. I've watched the show on and off depending on what was happening and I love this coupling. It's a pity that the show just cannot allow anybody to be happy anymore and storylines seem to limp on from plot to plot. Almost as soon as they were together (after a lot of rejection, a mud bath, a fake spider and Jack losing his hearing in one ear) the producers split them up, then got them back together, then got them married and then split them up. More on that, but in some kind of vague chronological order...

She pretends to hate but really kinda likes. That old yarn.




Skinny dipping and getting busted for it.


No fires, explosion, being shot, etc. This is rare footage.


Um... this is just strange and would make for a good caption game.


Hang on- I've seen this Friends episode! Aussie soaps seem to rip the show off a lot but here it was kinda cute because Jack is such a dag. Boy wants to marry girl but wants it to be a surprise so makes her think that he isn't into marriage, he goes too far, she goes to dump him, a friend intervenes and gives the boy a taste of his own medicine who goes home disheartened. Girl surprises him and proposes.


Engagement party. Something big happened here... probably to do with the Summer Bay Stalker. That's right! You can stalk whole towns now- beach, houses and all.

Big shit went down at their first wedding. The Summer Bay Stalker AKA Zoe-lover-of-Sarah-who-had-shot-Noah-sob blew the place (and maybe herself- although she may have come back to kidnap Sally at a later date) up.




We were promised deaths but key characters who perished went into 'witness protection' and lived to see another day. Yey Peter! But in the meantime Jack got his liver (because he 'died') and Martha and a few unfortunate others got into a helicopter crash and were missing-presumed-dead for what felt like a looooong time.


Shit went down upon Martha's return, which lead to the First Break-Up. Jack still loved her, she no longer felt the same way and started dating his partner and childhood chum.

At about the same time Jack got badly beaten when he found out before everybody else that his new liver could not possibly be Peter's old one because he was still alive! His physiotherapist was a lady named Sam who had a son called Rory. Things happened for them and they were cute.

At about the same time Martha realised that she actually did still love Jack. She went off the rails now and again and kissed her ex-and-taken husband a bit. Jack saved her from fires a few times.



And then this happened.

I'm only just catching up on this storyline. In what seems like a rush for the producers to get Jack and Martha back together pronto they completely U-turned Sam Holden's (Jack's second wife, now) character and revealed her to be a drug dealing murderer. After running out of options she killed herself, attempting to frame Jack and Martha for her murder. And I am only just finding out that Paul O'Brien looks particularly nice and unshaven at this time.

And wears no tops in his angst about impending imprisonment.


All of the stress brought Jack and Martha closer together. Her relationship with Roman ended and on the day of his wife's funeral, to which he was not welcome, Jack told her that he loved her and they got back together. Obviously not the best time. Aunty Morag was not impressed.



Very quickly they got engaged, got pregnant and got married again.

Engagement Party Mark II. Something happened here as well but no new stalker.

Unfortunately the baby was not Jack's but Roman's, Martha's ex. And just to throw more angst onto their shoulders the producers gave Martha cancer.

Jack arranged for them to be quietly married and on the same day they lost their baby.

Despite how very depressing this period was it was very lovely to have Jack and Martha back together. The two characters seem to have grown up since they were first together (and married).


Now, from what I understand Paul O'Brien wanted to leave to pursue other things. Good luck to him- but I've been put through a period of what I can only describe as mourning. It's mainly Joe Sivewright's fault because he really, really is a good actor. At the end of 2008 Jack was shot and as the new series picked up at the end of the first episode Tony found his son's body.


Apparently this was big news in Australia as (aside from the character being shot) there was no publicity that the actor may be leaving. There seems to be the belief that Jack has been taken into 'witness protection', but in some very moving scenes Martha lies with her husband's body who is very much not there. Unless Home & Away goes further down the Days of Our Lives route and has slipped him into some kind of death-coma, Jack Holden was murdered. The police, the murderer and the town seem to think that it was Angelo but other shots were fired that night. More angst to come, no doubt.


Ack- and that's the end. That was far more detailed than I had intended it to be. All that remains now is to finish off with some gratuitous images and get over it, but dammit- despite it's craziness and cheesiness Home & Away does know how to pull at my heart strings when it kills off my favourite characters.