Beth Newman

First Appearance: Episode 246
Last Appearance: Episode 282

Key Storylines:
Wayne pays prostitute, Beth Newman, to pretend to be Jill's mother (Jill believes her mother is dead); his aim is that Beth will persuade Jill that he's a nice guy. Although the pretence starts off well, Beth quickly grows to like Jill, and she realises that she doesn't deserve to be manipulated by Wayne. When Beth starts trying to persuade Wayne that what he's doing isn't a good idea, he sacks her. Beth goes to work for a new pimp, but when she overhears a client's secrets, she's beaten and the dingy room she's staying in is ransacked to stop her talking. She flees to Woombai, where Jill is staying with Fiona, and runs in to Wayne who tells her to leave. Beth, though, threatens to tell Jill the truth about his deception, and he's forced to let her stay. Her pimp, Michael Wilson, manages to trace her, and, realising there are men at the riding school who require 'other forms of entertainment', he puts Beth to work there. When a guest complains to Fiona, she orders Beth off the property, and she disappears, not telling Jill where she's going. Her conscience eventually gets the better of her, though, and she writes to Jill to tell her the truth about who she really is and Wayne's plans.

Ross Newman

First Appearance: Episode 510
Last Appearance: Episode 554

Key Storylines:
Ross Newman is a surgeon who likes a flutter on the horses, but by late-1984, he has serious gambling debts. He almost knocks down Patricia Morrell with his car after she runs into the road while fleeing from a gunman, but he stops to help her, and he treats an injury to her knee. However, he's then contacted by Roger Carlyle, and he does a deal with him: Roger will pay off his gambling debts if he kills Patricia. Ross does his best to do this, first of all by driving Patricia crazy by prescribing hallucination-inducing drugs and then, when she becomes wise to this, by planning to kill her on the operating table when she concedes to having an operation to fix the damage to her knee. His plan backfires, though, after Patricia keeps protesting to everyone that he's trying to kill her; Irene Fisher becomes suspicious about him, and she and the hospital administrator stand and watch Ross as he operates, meaning he can't put his plan into action. He incurs the wrath of Roger Carlyle as a result, and Roger ends up taking matters into his own hands.

Meanwhile, Ross meets Barbara Hamilton - who has separated from Gordon - and he's immediately attracted to her when he finds out that she has a lot of money. He strings her along, writing out prescriptions for tranquillisers to help her get over her split from Gordon, and he then uses her 'spaced-out' condition to get her to write cheques which, although he purports are going to the hospital's Research Foundation, he actually pockets himself. At the same time, he becomes involved with Katie O'Brien, using the young, attractive teenager to satisfy his sexual needs. His duplicity is discovered after a worried Andy Green and Amanda Morrell manage to persuade a sceptical Barbara that Ross isn't on the level, and she confronts him at his flat and finds Katie there. Ross loses both of them.

Having failed to get his hands on Barbara's money, Ross looks for other methods. When Beryl Palmer gives birth to a son, Ross asks a friend of his, Gloria Dutton, to kidnap the child. Gloria agrees to do this, and Ross holds the little boy to ransom. His initial attempts to force Beryl to pay-up fail, but he finally gets his hands on the money - only to be ambushed by David. Ross is carted off by the police, but not before telling Beryl that Gloria has disappeared with her son and that even he doesn't know where she is.

Bjorn Nilsson

First Appearance: Episode 764
Last Appearance: Episode 788

Key Storylines:
Fiona meets Bjorn Nilsson on the cruise she goes on to recuperate after her treatment for cancer - he is a purser on the ship. Shortly after she returns to dry land, Bjorn turns up at the mansion and announces that he has six weeks' holiday and has come to stay! A ladies' man, Bjorn scandalises Janice with his open marriage: he has a wife, Kirsten, and two children, at home in Sweden, but he and Kirsten have an arrangement that they can see other people - and Bjorn takes full advantage of this! He is tamed, however, when he meets Alison Carr: he finds himself very much attracted to her, and he manages to stay faithful to her the whole time he is in Australia - despite being set-up by Wayne to make it look as though he's cheating on her.

When his six weeks' holiday come to an end, Bjorn has to say a sad farewell to Alison and the other friends he's made in Sydney, before returning to life on the sea.

Cheri Nolan

First Appearance: Episode 546
Last Appearance: Episode 564

Key Storylines:
Amanda Morrell and Andy Green meet up with Cheri Nolan while they're travelling in Europe in early-1985. Cheri had previously been the nurse who treated Todd Fisher when he was dying in a clinic in Switzerland; while she's in Sydney, she moves into a room in Fiona and Irene's boarding house. Cheri has strong morals and can't bear to see people suffering; as a result, she'd helped Todd to die and she also takes pity on Robin Elliott when Jill takes her to see him in hospital: she secretly turns off his life support machine, although she makes it look like his death is natural.

When Karen Fisher wants a nurse to care for her son, Alan Fisher, after he becomes a paraplegic, she hires Cheri because of her previous experience at nursing Todd. However, Cheri decides to admit that she has performed euthanasia on Todd and Robin and Karen immediately fires her. Alan, though, pleads with Cheri to help him die - he feels unable to live the rest of his life as in invalid. Cheri refuses, persuading him that he still has a future in front of him, but she inadvertently leaves some needles and some vials of morphine lying around near him, and he uses them to commit suicide. After Karen reports Cheri to the police, Cheri decides that she has no option but to flee Sydney. Fiona, Jill, Amanda and Andy all agree not to say anything about the acts of compassion that she's carried out.