No trip to Melbourne, Australia is complete without a visit to the Neighbours set. As you can tell from my previous review on Neighbours the show, this is one of my favourite shows from childhood and I grew up watching it and was actually very excited at the prospect of going to visit the street when I went backpacking in Australia a few years ago.

The fictional Ramsay Street is set in the fictional town of Erinsborough. In real life the show is filmed in a place called Pinoak Court which is in the suburb of Vermont South, 29 kilometres from Melbourne CBD.

An online search for a tour of Ramsay Street will take you to a variety of sites but look for the ones that say official Neighbours tour. If you are backpacking around Australia though all of the hostels you stay at will have information on the tour and you can often book your tickets through them. When I did the tour back in 2005 I think the tour bus actually did pick ups from a number of the hostels too because obviously it’s generally young people that are staying in the hostels and it’s young people who want to go on the tour.

Looking at the websites now it seems that a tour will cost you AUS $50 and will last for approximately 3 hours. AUS$50 equals approximately £25 which I guess is not too bad although I do remember it being a bit cheaper a few years ago, oh well, I guess that’s inflation. There are also a number of different options available to you which are worth researching. For example you can go and actually meet some of the cast on Ramsay Street or you can go to a special evening in a pub where you meet a few of the cast and socialise with them. As my boyfriend at the time was already mortified that I was dragging him off to Ramsay Street and was hoping that no one ever found out that he did such a naff thing we decided to just go on the tour and not be as sad as to meet the cast or anything embarrassing like that!

I have to see that I was a bit disappointed with the tour itself but just the actual experience of being on the Ramsay Street that I had seen on my television for years was just about enough to take away my disappointment. There was really not much substance to the tour. We were picked up in a minibus with about 10 ish other people. We were promised refreshments half way round the tour. Well, this turned out to be a tub of Haribo type sweets that were passed around the bus from time to time. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m never one to turn down gummy sweets but I was at least expecting a beer and some cake or something like that when refreshments were advertised.

We firstly drove past Erinsborough High, the school where all the children from the street attend. They often have quite a lot of scenes here and it’s an integral part of the show so we were all interested to see it. It’s an actual school so of course we could not go in. What we did do was get out of the bus. Then the tour guide took out a wooden sign from the back of the bus with the Erinsborough High logo on it, hung it over the barbed wire fence of the school and bingo, the filming location for the school where we could take photos etc.

Secondly we drove past a few streets where the guide pointed out places of interest such as where Kylie and Jason went for a date, things like that, not that interesting as they didn’t bring back any memories for me.

Whilst driving around in the bus we were treated to some television clips of memorable Neighbours moments such as various weddings, funerals, goodbyes, etc. The guide also provided some trivia and asked us questions about yourselves etc.

The main part of the trip though was our stop at Ramsay Street itself and I have to say this was the only part I was really looking forward to or really enjoyed. We parked on the street and were allowed to get off the bus. The tour guide had a big pole with the Ramsay Street street sign on it that we could all take turns holding and having our photo taken by. We were given about half an hour if I remember correctly to walk around the street looking at all the houses etc. On first impressions the street was a lot longer than in looks on the show and also a bit more sloped that it looks on television too however it was very familiar and fun to see all the front of the houses. As it’s a real residential street we were not allowed inside of course and we could not walk up to the front doors either. This was perfectly fair to me as if I lived there I think I would tire of the endless stream of tourists coming to my street but I guess there is some kind of cache of saying that you live on Ramsay street. If I can remember correctly I think only two people have moved away from the street since they have been filming there so it’s obviously not that intrusive for the residents. Apparently I think don’t film too often, getting all their outside shots at one time so to cause the least amount of disruption possible.

Once we had taken our photos outside Mrs Mangle’s house and the Robinson house we all got back on the bus and were dropped off at our various pick up points having taken part in a bit of television history. If you’re a Neighbours fan I would recommend this tour just for the pure fact that you get to see the street but it was a little lacking on the wow factor for me!!