Ailsa Stewart

Ailsa Stewart (née Hogan) [1]was a main character from the Pilot Episode (Jan 1988) until Ep 2960 (Nov 2000). She eloped with Alf Stewart in May 1988 (Ep 86) and they remained married until her sudden death from a heart attack age 50. She was played by Judy Nunn, apart from 15 episodes in 2000 when Nanceye Hayes stepped into the role temporarily.

Ailsa Stewart
Character Profile
Birthday:	14 September 1950 - 24 November 2000
Birthplace:	Australia
Father:	Harold O'Rourke
Mother:	Mrs O'Rourke
Siblings:	Bridget O'Rourke Tony O'Rourke
Spouse:	Alf Stewart (1988-2000)
Children:	Shauna Bradley (1979) Duncan Stewart (1986)
Occupation:	Shopkeeper Diner owner
Played By:	Judy Nunn (1988-2000) Nancye Hayes

Backstory[]

Ailsa O'Rourke was born to Harold O'Rourke and his wife. She was one of 3 children - she had a brother Tony and a sister Bridget. Ailsa's father was a heavy drinker who used to beat his wife and children. One night in 1968 while Harold was attacking his wife with a broken bottle, Ailsa stabbed him to death with a carving knife. She was sent to prison for 3 years for manslaughter, mostly down to her refusal to show any remorse for the crime. The events of that fateful night in 1968 had a lasting effect on Ailsa. She moved around a lot over the next decade, never settling anywhere. While in jail, she was raped by a prison officer and gave birth to a daughter. Her daughter was adopted by her cellmate's sister and grew up as Shauna Bradley.

1988-2000[]

In January 1988, Ailsa found herself running a small shop in Summer Bay and was dating widower Alf Stewart. The relationship wasn't really going anywhere, largely because Alf didn't want to upset his teenage daughter Roo and was tiptoeing around her. Before this, she briefly dated Donald Fisher but that relationship didn't last.

Ailsa was one of Bobby Simpson's only supporters in the town and had an interest in making sure she didn't go off the rails. She befriended Pippa Fletcher when the Fletchers moved to the Bay. It helped that Pippa was also interested in making sure Bobby would be okay. When Alf and Ailsa got engaged, Roo's disapproval of Ailsa turned into spite. She approached her lawyer aunt Morag in the hope that she might dig up some dirt on her future stepmother. Morag came up with the goods - she discovered that Ailsa had spent time in prison for manslaughter. Roo hoped that revealing this bombshell at the engagement party would split the happy couple up. It didn't work at all, as Alf stood by Ailsa. When Bobby was forced to leave the Fletchers' care temporarily, Ailsa suggested to Alf that they get married straight away. She made it seem romantic but she had an ulterior motive. She wanted her and Alf to become Bobby's foster parents but they could only do so if they were married (her past criminal record was mitigating against her). The two went to the city and married off-screen.

Shortly after the wedding, The Macklin Group decided to develop a resort in Summer Bay. This led to tensions between the newlyweds because they had very different opinions on the development; Alf was in favour and stood to make a lot of money. Ailsa believed it would destroy the local environment and the quiet charm of the town. Roo and Brett Macklin whipped up trouble behind the scenes because both had something to gain from the marital strife. It led to Alf and Ailsa having a terrible row where he learned that Ailsa had married him for the chance to foster Bobby. In a moment of anger, he used her father's murder against her. Believing Alf also saw her as nothing more than a murderer, Ailsa broke up with him, sold her shop to Celia and left the Bay. She moved to Sydney where she reconnected with her close friend Graham Lynch. She then moved on to Singapore where she came to realise how lonely she was without Alf. When a tearful Alf rang her out of the blue and made a heartfelt speech, she returned home. The pair of them reaffirmed their marriage vows in front of their friends. Shortly afterwards, Ailsa found that she was pregnant. She and Alf had a son named Duncan in January 1989. She suffered from postnatal depression after the birth and briefly struggled to care for Duncan.

Later in the year, she and Bobby Simpson opened the iconic Bayside Diner. This 50's style diner kept the residents of Summer Bay fuelled on a diet of coffees, hamburgers, meatloaves, carrot cake and milkshakes for years to come. In 1989, Ailsa's wayward niece Emma Jackson came to live with her and Alf. She was a daughter of Ailsa's younger sister Bridget who she had lost touch with. Emma had run away from home because of her stepfather. Bridget resurfaced briefly when she tried to take Emma back home permanently. She revealed herself to be a bitchy woman who couldn't resist making digs at her older sister. Emma turned out to be the first of many people who came to live with the Stewarts.

Episode 661 — Ailsa, Alf and the Deans in happier times

In 1990 brother and sister Blake and Karen Dean came to live with the Stewarts. They were the children of Ailsa's former prison cellmate Margot Dean, who had recently died of cancer. At first it looked like Blake would be the one who would cause the headaches but ultimately, Karen was the one who went off the rails in spectacular fashion. She was sent to prison for robbery and manslaughter in 1992, something that cut deep with Ailsa. Simon Fitzgerald moved in for a year but moved away to join his father Bill once he got out of prison. Blake and Karen's half-sister Roxanne (Roxy) Miller lived with them for a while too, as did Sarah Thompson. Ailsa was devastated in 1993 when her great friend Bobby died in a motorboat accident.

In May 1995 (Ep 1699), Ailsa was attacked and robbed at the Diner by a customer she had thrown out earlier that evening. She went into shock and then had a breakdown. She refused to leave the house and started having hallucinations. Most notably (or notoriously, depending on your point of view), she heard Bobby's voice whispering to her. She then saw Bobby's head emerging from the fridge in the kitchen (Ep 1709 and Ep 1710). It turned out that her hallucinations were being caused by the anti-depressant tables she had been taking. They were 6 years out of date. Free from these trippy pills, Ailsa sought help from a psychiatrist friend of Pippa's. That helped enormously but it also led to a brief wobble in her marriage to Alf. For a time she questioned whether she still loved him or not.

In 1997 Ailsa's long-lost younger brother Tony came to visit. He bore a grudge against Ailsa, stemming back to when she had stabbed their father. Their mother had died afterwards and young Tony was taken into care. That had not gone well for him and he blamed Ailsa for it all. He had planned to exact revenge on her but changed his mind after meeting Ailsa. Also in 1997, Alf and Ailsa took in Aaron Welles, who was the half-brother of Justine Welles.

In 1999, Ailsa's discovered that Shauna Bradley, a recent arrival to Summer Bay, was in fact her long-lost daughter. Shauna had been conceived after Ailsa was raped by a prison guard. After she was born, she was given up for adoption. After the initial shock the two slowly began to bond. Ailsa paid a visit to her childhood home to bury old ghosts.

Images-13 — Ailsa suffers a fatal heart attack

In September 2000, Alf and Ailsa's house was destroyed in a mudslide. If that wasn't bad enough, a month later the Bayside Diner was burnt down after a chip pan fire. Ailsa was devastated at losing her last link to Bobby but decided to start again. Sam Marshall, who had inherited Bobby's share of the diner, told her he was unwilling to reinvest his share of the insurance pay-out into a new business. After a tip-off from Vinnie Patterson about an empty unit that was up for rent, Alf and Ailsa established the Beachside Diner. It was a smaller premises but was closer to the beach. In Ep 2960 (the season finale) Ailsa was moving some boxes when she suffered a massive heart attack. She died in front of a horrified Alf.

Ailsa's funeral took place in January 2001 (Ep 2961). Many Summer Bay residents gathered for her funeral but few relatives apart from Alf, Duncan and Shauna were there. Her brother Tony, sister Bridget and niece Emma did not attend her funeral. Ailsa's ashes were scattered at sea off the coast of Summer Bay.

Memorable info[]

Date of birth: 14 September 1950

Died: 24th November 2000 (aged 50) (heart attack, cardio)

Full Name: Ailsa Stewart (Née O'Rourke)

First Line: (whilst tap dancing) "Just practising my routine for the variety night." (to Doris Peters)

Last Line: Yeah (to Alf, after he suggests she takes a relaxing bath after work)

Ailsa's son Duncan underwent SORAS (Soap Opera Rapid Ageing Syndrome) in 1998 when his year of birth was moved back by 3 years. Inconsistent dates seems to have been a family tradition (Alf's true age is quite the rabbit hole...) because the timeline for her imprisonment and her daughter Shauna's birth make no sense to long-term viewers. In 2000, Ailsa said she had been in prison 20 (or thereabouts) years ago and that's when she was raped by the prison warder who fathered her daughter Shauna. That means she would've been pregnant in the late 1970's or 1980. In 1988 Ailsa said she had stabbed her father when she was 16 and sent to prison for 3 years. Ailsa was born in 1950 so if you do the math (as the Americans say), she was behind bars in the 1960's. Shauna was in her early twenties when she came to Summer Bay.
Bevan Lee, H&A scriptwriter and series script editor is said to have named Ailsa after his friend Ailsa Piper. She is an actress who later starred in Neighbours as Ruth Wilkinson. Coincidentally, Judy Nunn herself wrote some scripts for Neighbours in its early days.
With Alf's remarriage to his first wife Martha, Ailsa seems to have been largely written out of the Home and Away annals.
In 2000, Ailsa was played by Judy Nunn, who is now better known as an author. Interestingly, she was briefly recast for a month in mid-2000 (Ep 2848 - Ep 2868) while Judy Nunn was in hospital. During this time, she was played by Nancye Hayes and in true Home and Away fashion, nobody batted an eyelid.
The fan-run Instagram account Home and Away The Early Years gently lampoons the show. One of its most loved reels is the one where Ailsa is seen repeatedly ducking out of the diner and asking others to keep an eye on the place https://www.instagram.com/p/CdMWFOxAzWl/?hl=en