Number 96 Home Page

Essay by Anne Harrex, February 2014 Between 1972 and 1974, eight novelisations based on storylines from the TV show, Number 96 , were published by Angus & Robertson under the Arkon paperback imprint. In the end, I wrote seven of these and edited another of them (“The Wayward Husband”) for publication. It all began with an advertisement in the weekend newspaper, “The Review”, formerly “Sunday Review”, “The Sunday Review” and, in its last incarnation, “Nation Review”. The ad may have appeared somewhere else, but this was where I saw it. Writers were wanted for crime and romance novels (I think it was romance) – “to apply send examples of your work to…” (The address gave no other clues.) I’d always been writing and had a drawerful of rejection slips to prove it. As I had two young children, who were now both at school, it looked like the ideal thing for me. In those days there were still postal deliveries on a Saturday morning. It was a Saturday some weeks later when a parc...

40 years ago today, the final episodes of "Number 96" (#1217 & 1218) aired on Sydney television. Many former cast members returned to take curtain call bows with the final residents. What happened that night...: The residents of Number 96 are horrified to learn the identity of the building's mysterious buyer. The person who is driving them from their homes is none other than Maggie Cameron! Giovanni Lenzi and Marilyn MacDonald's romance fizzles once again, with Marilyn's decision to become a nun. Little Simon Dawson's body is found in Tamworth, but it is a false alarm. Giovanni announces a sell-out sale in the deli. Maggie explains that she couldn't resist one last trick played on the residents. Simon turns up safe and well. Dorrie Evans loses Herb half a million dollars because of her anger over his business relationship with Opal "Gran" Wilkinson. Everyone is pleased that the building will not change hands after all. While Arnold Feathe...