As he gets ready to return to TV, the former Home and Away actor is up about the lifestyle he enjoys the most.
It was a full circle experience for actor Steve Peacocke to film RFDS in a rural area of Australia.
It implied going back to the carefree way of life he most values.
Steve, who is originally from Dubbo in rural NSW and has a child with wife Bridgette Sneddon, shot the upcoming Channel 7 show in Broken Hill so that his family could share a similar experience away from the bustle of the big metropolis.
On Tuesday night, RFDS, which follows the lives of medical professionals working for the Royal Flying Doctors Service stationed in Broken Hill, 13 hours west of Sydney, will return to Channel 7 for season two.
After becoming a father, Peacocke, 41, who is well recognised for his work on Home and Away, reprises his role as Nurse Pete Emerson.
Any parent could consider the value of taking a first aid course after spending time in the RFDS environment, and for Steve and Bridgette, it was a crucial duty they finished before their baby entered the picture.
The actor tells 7Life, “You do all those first aid courses, we did one before we started a family.”
“I believe that it is important to know for sure. I believe figuring out the fundamentals doesn’t take long.
The actor jokes that he is “happy to park (his first aid experience) and let people who know what the hell they’re doing do it” as he laughs at all the medical emergencies that his character Pete has encountered this season.
Steve’s “dream job” was to accompany his family back to rural Australia.
“Breakneck is just so isolated from the East Coast,” he adds. “When I grew up in Dubbo, it was about 20,000 people, which is probably not far from what Broken Hill is now.”
It’s excellent that you feel more at home in the surrounding bush.
“I would live in the wilderness and only travel to the city when necessary.
“Acting is the most enjoyable job I’ve ever had, so to be able to do it in the outback with all these different kinds of people I grew up with is an absolute treat,” she said.
Despite having a young family, Steve claims that adjustment was easy because the new parents were experienced travellers and accustomed to moving across the world.
We’ve travelled to some fantastic areas internationally with business that we would probably have never been to, he says. “To get to go and live somewhere new and explore a whole new region.”
Steve names London, New Mexico, Spain, and Budapest from the extensive list.
The actor explains that although he has spent the last fifteen years travelling, he “didn’t really travel until I was 28”.
“I was working, but I just had no money.”
After graduating from college, he says, “I basically worked as a labourer for ten years until I was fortunate enough to land the Home and Away role.”
“I just didn’t have the money to go; all of my friends were on the road, and I was kind of at home just trying to keep the lights on.
Then I got this job, which has kind of taken us around… We are quite fortunate.
Steve claims that this season of the show has “a different look and feel” after the great success of season one in 2021, which brings him back to Broken Hill.
“For eight episodes, my character in particular had a fairly tough time… I found it to be a pretty exciting experience, even if it was really exhausting to play,” he says.
Steve claims that in order to help him get ready for the work once more, he consulted RFDS members whose accounts served as the inspiration for the TV scripts.
Steve noted two members of the RFDS staff: Dr. Tim Duncan and Andrew, a flight nurse. He said that they were there “to guide us through stuff, and I probably annoyed them with how many questions I was asking, just because I was curious.
However, some of the material they have seen is simply absurd, absurd, absurd, and absurdly unbelievable.
“They’ve seen everything,”
The actor expresses his astonishment at the nurses’ and physicians’ ability to “rock up to someone’s worst day of their life and their heart rate stays completely calm.”
In spite of the dire situation, they are able to rescue lives and make decisions by simply ignoring the catastrophe’s background noise.
“And as you well know, all medical professionals are remarkable.
“What these people can do out here in the middle of nowhere with dust and flies and whatever else they’ve got to deal with is extraordinary.”
