Angus quickly clashed with the Kennedys' grandson Ben, when he found, and stole, some money that Ben had been hiding in his guitar case. As Ben and his friend Xanthe had stolen the money from a hotel suite at Lassiter's, he was unable to tell anyone about it, and couldn't explain why he and Angus were struggling to get along. When a place opened up at an experimental cancer clinic in Germany, Sarah realised that it might be her only hope, and so she told Angus that she had to go away on a business trip, and that he'd be moving in with the Kennedys until she got back. Furious at being abandoned once again, Angus called his dad, but was rejected - and it wasn't until he met Xanthe that he decided that he'd quite like to stick around.

With Sarah gone, Angus' feelings of abandonment only worsened and, as he started at Erinsborough High, his feuding with Ben grew into a bigger problem, particularly when Xanthe let slip that Piper and Ben had been responsible for a huge fire that had ripped through the school six months earlier. When matches and lighter fluid were planted in Ben's locker, he assumed that Angus was behind it, and ended up punching him - in front of both Xanthe and Susan. With Ben then sent home, and as someone else admitted to putting the stuff in the locker, Angus found an opportunity to get closer to Xanthe and after learning that she was underprepared for an exam that afternoon, he set off the fire alarm. Though the incident caused bad memories to come flooding back for many of the students, Angus felt little guilt, and failed to own up to anything when Susan confronted him after learning that he'd pulled similar stunts at his other schools. Meanwhile, believing that Ben and Angus had been fighting over her, Xanthe was disappointed to learn the real reason, and as she incorrectly thought that Ben wasn't interested in her, she accepted a date with Angus, when he bought tickets to see her favourite girl band, Sista Hood - unaware that Ben had done the same thing, but had been beaten to the punch. Following the gig, Xanthe and Angus called in at Harold's Cafe to shelter from a storm, and ended up sharing their first kiss.

When Xanthe celebrated her 16th birthday the following week, she was left devastated when Angus was one of the few people to turn up - with Piper caught up in family dramas, Ben unable to watch her and Angus together, and the rest of the kids from school attending a rival party organised by Alison Gore. After deciding that she wanted the day to still be memorable for a good reason, Xanthe asked Ben to sleep with her, but when Sheila found out what was going on, she was quick to march into the Kennedy house and drag Xanthe out of Angus' room, determined that her granddaughter wouldn't rush into something she'd later regret. Xanthe was mortified, but Angus had begun to realise how important it all was to her, and decided to let her down gently, telling her that they weren't right for each other and that he wanted to end things between them. Continuing to show the more sensitive side to his personality, Angus then went and told Susan that he was the one who'd set off the fire alarm at the school. Though Susan was pleased that Angus finally seemed to be settling in and learning to trust her, Ben was still uncomfortable with his presence, and particularly his closeness to Xanthe, and angrily confronted his grandparents, wanting to know why they seemed to be letting Angus get away with his behaviour - unaware that Angus had heard everything. That conversation continued to play on Angus' mind, and as he helped out of Karl's bar, Off Air, he got to thinking about why the Kennedys would bother to look after him, as he was the son of a woman Karl had cheated on Susan with. He then came to a surprising conclusion, and confronted Karl, asking him if he was actually his dad. Karl insisted that he wasn't, but he remained unable to tell Angus the truth about why they had taken him in.

Following his brief relationship with Xanthe, Angus was shocked to learn that she was planning to get a boob job, as she felt that she was ugly and unattractive. Though he problems with her image stemmed back to her mother's influence, Angus tried to make her see that he hadn't dumped her because of her looks. Ben, Piper and Aaron then all tried to change her mind too, eventually calling in Sheila, who turned up at the clinic and dragged her granddaughter away. The teens soon had other things to worry about, however, when Tom Quill came looking for the money that Xanthe and Ben had stolen from his hotel suite, the same money that Angus had taken from Ben's guitar case. Aaron, who'd previously dated Tom, agreed to help them out, and they managed to gather up the $1500 that they hadn't spent, but Tom told Aaron that he was still expecting the full $10,000, and that they had two weeks to get it to him. As the trio of teenagers looked for ways to raise the cash - including lying to their neighbours that they were collecting and selling old clothes for charity - they decided to form a band and start busking. With Ben now aware of the real reason for Angus staying with the Kennedys, he tried to be a little more understanding, as creative differences threatened to split the newly-formed band apart. Xanthe wasn't quite so understanding, feeling that Angus was being unreasonable, so Ben told her about Sarah's cancer - and Xanthe could only hold onto the secret for a few hours before her sympathy got the better of her and she told Angus everything.