Two of Home And Away’s most enduringly popular characters, Brax and Ricky, played by Stephen Peacocke and Bonnie Sveen, return to screens this week in episodes filmed in WA last October.

Their reappearance is much anticipated, with fans right around the world counting down the days until their episodes air from Monday.

“What a way to showcase the State!” says the show’s long-serving executive producer Julie McGauran, who worked with Tourism WA to bring the show to our shores.

The production filmed scenes at Perth’s Elizabeth Quay before travelling north to locations across the Coral Coast for a 10-day run — a mammoth undertaking.

“But oh, it’s just the most amazing area — the colours!” McGauran says of their road trip north.

“The colours of the earth, and the colour of the water at Coral Bay and Turquoise Bay — it’s like nowhere else.

“Everywhere you turn, there is something beautiful to see.”

And she’s right: those red dirt expanses, big skies and sparkling ocean vistas steal every scene they are in. It’s not hard to imagine audiences, both locally and internationally where the soap is still phenomenally popular, will be just as smitten.

“We absolutely love Brax and Ricky, but also Steve and Bonnie, and we’d known for some time we wanted to find a way to bring them back,” McGauran explains, adding that WA came into the picture once storylines had been workshopped.

Interestingly, someone from the show’s production had recently enjoyed a holiday in Exmouth and saw its potential as a filming location. The wheels were set in motion.

“Nicole, one of the producers, visited as a guest,” says Bullara Station owner Edwina Shallcross, who runs the property that doubles for Brax and Ricky’s hidey-hole on the show.

“She had this experience with us at Bullara and fell in love with the location and the feeling of the place.

“She said, ‘This is going to be perfect’ . . . roll on a few more site visits and TWA coming onboard, it all just started to become reality.

“We were all very secret squirrels, and we couldn’t talk about it, but the day we shut down (for the end of tourism season), they all arrived.”

Brax and Ricky famously fled Summer Bay after Brax was unfairly accused of committing a crime, and in the trailer the ex “River Boy” surfer is pictured meeting Summer Bay resident Tane Parata (Ethan Browne).

Tane is also staring down a lengthy prison sentence for a crime he didn’t commit and Brax has been asked to help out the troubled young dad.

The pair meet at Elizabeth Quay and before long Tane is on his way to stay with Brax, wife Ricky and their son Casey (Austin Cutcliffe), now of school age, on their remote property. And that’s where the storyline picks up.

Though the cast and crew had scant time to explore the region properly, they did manage to see a smattering of the stunning country, with scenes filmed on location at Ningaloo Coast World Heritage Area, Charles Knife Canyon, Yardie Creek, Turquoise Bay and the stunning Shothole Canyon in Cape Range National Park.