Neighbours

Although he initially arrived in Erinsborough with his family (brother Stonefish was eventually hunted down by their parents Angie and Kev), he decided to stay on when they left and was taken in by Karl and Susan Kennedy. Despite causing constant headaches for his surrogate family, not to mention involving their innocent young son Billy in most of his schemes, their stabilizing influence is largely responsible for the way he turned out.

As the class clown, no-one was more surprised than Toadie to discover that he possesses an above-average IQ of 135. Sadly, it took him a while to put his brains to particularly good use. When he wasn’t hunting for buried treasure or setting up a babysitting service with Billy to earn a quick buck, he was chasing girls. One memorable scam involved pretending to faint in an aerobics class so that gorgeous instructor Joanna Hartman would give him mouth to mouth. He made a miraculous recovery when one of the men in Joanna’s class stepped in to help.

It wasn’t until he went to university to study law that Toadie really came into his own. Finally putting his academic abilities to good use, he also became a successful DJ on Uni FM and moved into No. 30 with Joel Samuels and Sarah Beaumont (on whom he had once had a serious teenage crush). It was the start of No. 30 being a shared house for young professionals culminating in Toadie and new housemates Stu Parker and Connor O’Neill buying the place themselves and renaming it the House of Trouser.

Toadie is another Ramsay Street resident who has never been lucky in love. Always the joker, he never seemed to get the girl. From his early obsession with Steph Scully, to his fling with married Maggie Hancock, Toadie always ended up a shoulder to cry on, rather than the man of anyone’s dreams. After a string of failed relationships, Toadie appeared to have finally hit the jackpot when he married Dione Bliss but in one of the biggest tragedies to rock Ramsay Street, he was distracted by a kiss from his new missus and drove their car off a cliff. Dee’s body was never found.

These days Toadie is quietly getting on with his life. He works for the law firm Tim Collins and Associates and still has a soft spot for the underdog. Although he complains about the grief that they give him, he has always been there for his troubled younger relatives, acting as a temporary guardian for Tad Reeves and his Timmins cousins. Anxious not to turn completely respectable, Toadie took up wrestling for a while and was a huge success as The Lawman: special move, The Summons.

Since Dee he hasn’t had much more luck in the romance department. Girlfriend Sindi left him for best mate Stu, one-time wrestling partner Eva moved inter-state to try and crack the professional scene and things never quite got off the ground with Katya Kinski. Resigning himself to life as a bachelor, Toadie threw himself into his work and his community, providing a sturdy shoulder to cry on when friend and neighbour Steph Scully found herself a single parent.

With her husband Max missing somewhere in Tasmania, Steph and Toadie got closer and closer. He was about to declare his feelings when local criminal Guy Sykes held everyone at Number 32 hostage. Toadie managed to disarm Guy but as ushered everyone to safety and fled the building he was shot in the back. The bullet was too close to his spine to safely remove meaning that Toadie still lives with a ticking timebomb inside him. Steph kept a vigil by his bedside until he was discharged.

Toadie was crushed when Max returned and Steph agreed to try again for the sake of their son Charlie. Eventually though, they realised that their marriage was over and Toadie and Steph battled to make the uneasy transition from friends to lovers. Having had a crush on Steph since he was a kid, Toadie found the change relatively easy and happily proposed. However, Steph wasn’t quite as convinced and on their wedding day she stumbled over her vows at the altar. Toadie called the wedding off, believing Steph had never really loved him as anything more than a friend.

So what next for the Toadfish?