Sadly, Summer Bay fans are doomed to disappointment. Despite their recent campaign to get Home and Away‘s neighbourhood busybody Colleen Smart back on the show, the character won’t be calling out “Yoo-hoo! It’s only me!” anytime soon.
“I don’t think I’ve got the energy anymore,” actress Lyn Collingwood, who played Colleen, confirms to New Idea. “A few years ago I might have considered it, but now I’m that much older and about 12 inches shorter.
“I’m constantly taking up the hems of my dresses because they’re dragging in the dirt,” Lyn adds. “I’m not going to mention my age, but I will say I’m older than Ray Meagher, who just had his 80th in July.”
Recently, Home and Away viewers took to social media in droves begging producers to bring back Lyn’s much-loved character. Lyn appeared on Home and Away for its first two seasons, alongside Peter Vroom as her slow-witted son, Lance. She later returned as a regular in 1999 before her retirement in 2012.
“I was very fond of Peter because he was a bright, funny boy,” Lyn, a graduate of the University of Sydney and a former schoolteacher, adds.
“We had some fun with it. I remember one storyline where Lance was looking for a piece of real estate to buy. We went into various apartments on location near Palm Beach. And I opened all those people’s drawers and wardrobes and had a really good stickybeak, you know.”
Lyn often contributed comedic lines and flair to her scenes. She says it was “nice” to have “a little input” into the creative side, and liked nothing better than hearing the Home and Away crew having “a bit of a cackle” during rehearsals.
As Summer Bay’s gossip with a heart of gold, Colleen’s story highlights included a brush with cancer, a brief gambling addiction, and burning down the Bayside Diner by accident. And let’s not forget Colleen’s other claim to fame – winning the Miss Groper beauty pageant in 1959.
“The wardrobe department gave me the Miss Groper sash when I left the show, and I still have it,” Lyn says chuckling. “They loved buying terrible clothes for my character because it was so different from all the glamorous stuff.
“Of course, Colleen thought she was an arbiter of good taste, but nearly everything she wore clashed horribly.”
At the height of her Home and Away fame, Lyn was recognised everywhere she went, from shopping in David Jones department stores to driving her car down the highway.
“Sometimes I got worn down by that,” she admits. “If I saw a group of schoolchildren approaching, I used to hide in a doorway and turn in the opposite direction so they wouldn’t see me!”
In the end, Lyn left Home and Away because she’d reached “a certain age”. At the time, she said she’d especially miss working with Lynne McGranger and Ada Nicodemou. But the character viewers loved or loathed clearly lives on in many memories.
“I’m surprised anyone even remembers me,” Lyn, who lives in Sydney’s Inner West, tells us.
A life member of the left-leaning New Theatre, she organises monthly pub play readings, belongs to historical societies for the suburbs of Glebe and Marrickville, campaigns to preserve local heritage, and is soon to publish a book.
“Watch this space,” she says mysteriously.
Will Peter Vroom return to Home and Away?
But what about Colleen’s son, Lance?
While Lyn has no plans to return to Home and Away, her former on-screen son, Peter Vroom, is keen for Lance to have a comeback!
Peter, 56, now lives in Los Angeles and is a meditation teacher. The father of two says the career change came about as he was no longer “passionate” about acting.
“I got lucky with the role of Lance,” he tells New Idea. “I was only 17 and I really liked working on Home and Away. But you have to be pretty disciplined if you want to make a living out of acting and I didn’t have that passion.
“That said, I absolutely would go back to the show if they asked me! They were good times and Lyn was hilarious, dragging me around by the ear.”