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Guest Character Profiles > Aster Conway Isla Louise Goulas, Scout Bowman, Amelia Gavin

Aster Conway 2019-2020, 2023
Lived: 28, 32 Ramsay Street
Parents: Elly Conway and Shaun Watkins

Before she even born, there was drama surrounding Aster Conway, as her mother Elly lied to Mark Brennan that she was pregnant with his child, desperate not to lose him. When the truth came out - that Shaun Watkins was actually the father of Elly's unborn child - he was keen to be a part of the baby's life, and he and Elly agreed on the name Aster for their daughter, named after his favourite flower that he'd seen growing in Europe. Whilst in Switzerland later in the year, Shaun went missing, having seemingly been killed in an avalanche.

Aster's arrival into the world also proved to be dramatic, as Elly, along with Shaun's half brother Finn Kelly, was held hostage by fugitive Robert Robinson as she went into labour. Robert threatened Elly and Finn with a knife, warning them not to call for help, then simply walked out of the house as baby Aster was born. At the hospital, the new arrival was checked over and found to be in good health, as was Elly, so she returned home to Ramsay Street that night. The circumstances around the birth had brought her closer to Finn, who, to complicate matters further, was dating Elly's half-sister, Bea Nilsson. Finn and Elly had a difficult history, with his psychotic behaviour in the past causing a great deal of heartache for everyone. Having awoken from a coma claiming to have no memory of his past actions, Finn had been accepted into the community, apparently a changed person. With the attraction growing, and Elly having enough to deal with as a new mum, she decided that the best option would be if she and Aster moved out, going to stay across the street at no. 32 with David Tanaka and Aaron Brennan.

Unfortunately, this plan to get some distance between her and Finn didn't work, as Elly ended up calling him for help when she couldn't get Aster to stop crying one night. Realising her mistake, Elly again tried to keep her distance, but as people started to notice that Finn wasn't visiting his niece in her new home, a housewarming party was arranged by David and Aaron, hoping that it would make Elly feel more at home and encourage her friends and family to feel like they could drop in and see her. During the party, Finn offered to help change Aster and, once alone, he and Elly discussed their situation. Finn realised that Elly was still struggling with sleep depravation due to Aster's crying and told her that he wanted to help, so that night, she sent him a text asking for help. As Finn was sneaking out of the house, he was caught by Susan - Bea and Elly's aunt and the only other person aware of the attraction between Elly and Finn. Susan went over to no. 32 in Finn's place, reminding her niece of why she'd had to move across the street and offering to babysit while she got some sleep.

When they found out about Susan's late-night visit, David and Aaron offered to help where they could, telling Elly that it would be good training for when they had a baby of their own. Though reluctant to accept help, Elly finally changed her mind when she fell asleep whilst standing up holding baby Aster. Though initially relieved to have some help, Elly slowly found that Aaron and David were taking over and when they took Aster to the lake for a picnic one day, without telling Elly where they were going, she angrily told them that they'd overstepped the mark and weren't cut out to be parents. Though she apologised, admitting that it was the first time that she hadn't known where Aster was since the birth and she'd panicked, tension remained between Elly and Aaron, who felt that she'd gone too far and had made David feel like he wasn't ready to be a father. Fortunately, after a few days, the tension was gone, as Aaron and David decided to start looking into ways to have a baby of their own, while Elly focused on choosing godparents, or lighthouses as she called them, for Aster, asking Bea and Finn to take on the roles at the naming day.

Elly and Finn were then thrown back together when he started thinking about contacting his estranged father, Trent, and Bea decided to go behind his back and contact the man. When Elly found out, she insisted on joining Bea to meet him, but as it all went wrong, the whole thing brought Elly and Finn closer as she comforted him over his past, and caused some distance to develop between Bea and Finn. When the emotion of Aster's naming day ceremony then got to them, Elly and Finn ended up kissing, but they quickly realised their mistake, with Elly not wanting to hurt Bea, while Finn was worried that Elly was triggering memories of his past psychotic behaviour. When a reluctant Finn was then tasked with going over to fix the alarm on the baby sensor that was upsetting Aster, the alarm ended up triggering a whole flood of memories for Finn, leaving him struggling to suppress his evil side. Events came to a head when a group of Ramsay Street residents went to an island for Elly's 35th birthday and Finn ended up killing Prue Wallace and Gary Canning, as well as leaving severals others for dead in an abandoned mine. When Finn then kidnapped Aster and attempted to kill Susan, he ended up falling into the shallow grave he'd been digging for her and accidentally drowning, with his body being found by Elly, who was quickly suspected of killing him. With the evidence against her piling up, Elly was charged and, aware that they needed family support, she and Aster moved back to the Kennedy house.

As she waited for her trial, Elly was hit by another blow when Finn's mother, Claudia, arrived, looking for answers about the death of her second son in less than a year. It quickly became clear that Claudia was plotting to get custody of Aster, as she employed lawyer Sam Fitzgerald - who herself had a difficult history with the Kennedy family - to help. With Elly likely to be going to prison, and not keen on the idea of taking her baby there with her, Claudia and Sam secretly worked to prove that Karl, Susan and Bea would be unsuitable guardians for Aster, as Claudia did her best to keep the Kennedys on side and offered her services as a babysitter. However, when Elly then decided to plead guilty to the downgraded charge of voluntary manslaughter, meaning she was less likely to get a custodial sentence, Claudia stepped up her scheming, trying to get Susan fired from her job as school principal and asking Sam to find a way to get Elly sent to prison. And so, after blackmailing the judge, Claudia managed to get Elly sent to prison for three years - but a last-minute decision from Elly to take Aster into prison with her left Claudia stunned.

After hearing that Andrea Somers, the mother of Toadie's son, Hugo, was in prison in the same wing as Elly, Claudia decided to contact her and pay her to scare Elly into sending Aster home. After starting a riot and managing to become Elly's new cellmate, Andrea started her plotting, while on the outside, Claudia encouraged Bea to speak to Elly, after she expressed her fears that Aster shouldn't be in prison with her. Between Bea and Andrea's thoughts on the matter, Elly came to the conclusion that she was being selfish and handed Aster over to Susan and Bea, allowing Claudia to put the next part of her plan in motion - proving that the Kennedys weren't suitable guardians.

After learning that Susan had been struggling since her ordeal with Finn and had suffered a panic attack, Claudia told the Kennedys that she was launching an interim parenting order to take the baby away from them. As the custody meeting got underway that afternoon, an already shocked Susan and Karl were stunned when Sam Fitzgerald walked in. As Sam explained that Karl, Susan and Bea all had full-time jobs and this, coupled with Susan's health problems, meant that they would struggle to look after a baby, and that Claudia had no responsibilities and a home in the form of the Lassiters penthouse, the Kennedys realised how long Sam and Claudia had been plotting. The judge then awarded interim custody of Aster to Claudia, leaving the baby in her grandmother's care for at least a year, or until Elly was released from prison. Though Karl and Susan wanted to appeal the decision, an already devastated Elly stopped them, saying that at least she still had weekly visits with Aster to look forward to, and she didn't want to risk losing those by upsetting Claudia.

While Claudia struggled with the reality of looking after a baby, Elly's close friend, and on-off partner, Chloe Brennan made it her mission to find proof that Claudia was up to something, and to get Aster back to the Kennedys. Working with her brother, Aaron, Chloe found proof that Claudia and Sam had been working together for weeks and that Claudia had also been trying to ruin Susan's career. They then found out that Claudia had helped to destroy evidence the previous year, which had helped Finn to avoid going to prison and caused him to be released into the Kennedy family's care. As Aaron confronted Claudia with this, she offered to help him and his husband David to illegally adopt a baby, knowing how desperate they were to be parents. They pretended to go along with the offer and hear her out, as Chloe and the Kennedys searched the penthouse for further proof of Claudia's criminal activities, and Toadie found out that Claudia had bribed the judge at Elly's hearing. When Claudia returned to the penthouse and realised that someone had been in there, she became aware that she was in trouble and attempted to do a runner with Aster. As she waited at the airport for a private plane, she was in for a huge shock when Shaun walked in, having found out that the family's private jet was flying out to Australia. He explained that he'd been found alive after surviving for months in a cabin, then time in hospital, but was more interested in how his mum had ended up with custody of Aster and why she was planning to leave the country with her.

As Claudia was arrested and charged for her many crimes, Elly was released on conditional bail, stunned to learn that Shaun was alive. With Claudia's guardianship also being overturned, Aster was returned to Elly's care and, over the weeks that followed, Shaun tried to come to terms with everything Finn and Claudia had done, whilst also wanting to support Elly and Aster, as Elly became increasingly worried about taking her baby out of the house or being apart from her. With support from Shaun and Bea, Elly managed to take Aster out for a hospital appointment, but as he found himself unable to cope with everything that Finn had done to the people of Erinsborough, Shaun decided to go back to Switzerland. When he returned, he started talking about making a permanent move to Erinsborough and Bea noticed that Elly was starting to see Shaun in a new light. Though Elly tried to deny it, she and Shaun ended up sleeping together. However, with Elly's time in prison still haunting her, she worried that the rumours about her would never go away and would also start to affect Aster, at which point Shaun suggested that the three of them should make a fresh start in Switzerland.

A couple of years after moving to Switzerland, Elly and Shaun had split up, and were both living in Sydney and co-parenting Aster. When Chloe found out, she visited Elly to check on her and, soon after, Elly turned up in Erinsborough, now convinced that, after years of uncertainty, Chloe was the person she wanted to be with. Already planning to leave Erinsborough to move to Adelaide, Chloe was shocked when Elly suggested that they could try being a couple in Sydney, and Elly then flew back to Sydney, giving Chloe time to think about it. When Elly returned the following week, Chloe had decided that she wanted to give it a go and the happy couple started their new life together.

After a couple of years as a family unit in Sydney, Elly, Chloe and Aster's happiness came under threat when Chloe started showing signs that her Huntington's Disease was progressing. Rather than break Elly's heart by telling her, she took up an offer to return to Erinsborough and help out at the hotel. As her visit dragged on, and she tried to avoid the subject of Elly, Chloe was forced to admit the truth when her partner arrived from Sydney for a visit. Fearing that her illness was going to cut short their future, Chloe was surprised when Elly insisted that it changed nothing and then got down on one knee and proposed. As a wedding was hastily planned for just after Christmas, Elly and Susan went up to Sydney to collect Aster. As they arrived back in Erinsborough, Susan took Aster to the spa for the day to keep her occupied as wedding plans were finalised. There, Aster admitted that Elly and Bea's mum, Liz, had been neglecting her and leaving her at home alone. When Elly found out, she was horrified and uninvited her mum from the wedding, before it was decided that Susan would go to Sydney and look after Aster while Elly and Chloe were on their honeymoon. As Aster completed her duties as flower girl at the wedding, everyone waved Elly and Chloe off on their honeymoon, before Susan and Aster returned to Sydney.

Trivia Notes
• Aster was played by Isla Louise Goulas (sometimes credited as Isla Goulas) from 2019 to 2020, with Scout Bowman also playing Aster in some 2020 episodes. The role was taken over by Amelia Gavin when Aster returned in 2023
• Aster was aged up to 6-years-old in 2023, due to the two-year time jump between the 2022 finale and 2023 return

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