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Character Profiles > Lochy McLachlan Amber Kilpatrick

Tiffany 'Lochy' McLachlan 1989-1990
Lived: 30 Ramsay Street
Parents: Russell and Petra McLachlan
Siblings: Ryan
Family Tree: McLachlan
Occupation: Schoolgirl

Tiffany McLachlan, the cheeky youngest child of Russell and Petra McLachlan, became known as Lochy by her school friends and was forever getting up to scrapes and mischief around the neighbourhood. Due to her affluent circumstances, Lochy never wanted for anything which often caused her to appear spoilt and pampered.

When Kerry Bishop started up an after-school childminding service, Lochy was the first child to be placed in her care. Lochy also become great mates with Kerry’s stepson Toby, and the duo regularly got up to all sorts of hijinks around Erinsborough. When they came across an empty house, they were convinced it was haunted but it quickly emerged that runaway teen Lee Maloney was living there and when the two told Matt Robinson all about it, he brought Lee home with him and ended up falling in love with her.

Lochy took a particular dislike to a group of magpies that made Ramsay Street their home for a time. After one of the magpies dive-bombed Lochy, she took it upon herself to hurl stones at their nest. Despite warnings from Toby and Helen Daniels that she would only make the birds angrier by attacking them, Lochy persisted. While Toby was inside alerting Kerry of Lochy’s actions, Lochy decided to climb the tree and destroy the nest once and for all. But just as Kerry came out onto the street and called her name, Lochy lost her balance and fell from the tree, ending up with a broken arm.

Although Lochy loved Kerry, she wasn’t overly keen on some of the other kids who soon joined her at No.32 after school. Her biggest nemesis was her classmate Natasha Kovac, who clashed with Lochy at every opportunity, and made life so miserable for her that Lochy made up stories to her aunt, Dorothy Burke about Kerry mistreating her. It was only when Dorothy, who had moved in next door to Kerry on Ramsay Street, threatened to report Kerry to the Department of Childcare that Lochy’s guilt got the better of her and she admitted she had made it all up. The ordeal, coupled with the discovery that she was pregnant, led to Kerry giving up the after care service but she agreed to continue looking after Lochy since they had gotten on so well together.

Lochy’s life was put in danger when she wagged school in order to tag along to the beach with her older brother Ryan and his girlfriend Tania Walsh. The couple hitched a lift to the beach with Kerry’s husband Joe, but Lochy sneaked into the back of Joe’s ute and infuriated Ryan and Tania when she revealed herself to them. Lochy managed to convince Tania to call her school and pretend to be her mother so they would think she was off sick for the day, and once that was done, Ryan told Lochy to get lost so he could be alone with Tania. But when the couple went looking for her some time later, they discovered her in difficulty in the water, having gone out on Ryan’s surfboard. Ryan pulled her to safety, and Lochy regained consciousness when some lifeguards gave her CPR. Ryan bore the brunt of everyone’s anger when they returned home, but Lochy pleaded with everyone to blame her since she was the one who had tagged along in the first place. So when Harold Bishop, who employed Ryan part-time after school at the Coffee Shop, promptly sacked Ryan for being late for work as a result of the beach outing, Lochy took to protesting outside the shop with a banner claiming Harold had sacked a hero. Harold was outraged by Lochy’s actions, particularly when it emerged that she had got the idea from Kerry – Harold’s daughter – after the sit-in she had participated in to block the demolition of the playground. And when the Erinsborough News turned up to cover the event, Lochy’s protesting paid off when Harold opted to re-instate Ryan to save the business any further negative publicity.

Lochy went through a run of bad luck when she started having nightmares after witnessing Dorothy accidentally knock Bouncer the dog down in the middle of Ramsay Street. And just as she was over the nightmares, Lochy contracted the mumps and had to be quarantined at No.32 for the whole Easter holidays. She felt slightly better when she appeared to have passed the disease on to Joe but it quickly emerged that Joe’s symptoms were psychosomatic.

When Lochy overheard Dorothy telling Joe all about one of her prized African statues which adorned her living room at No.30 and how it carried a curse if it was ever broken by anyone, she thought she was jinxed forever when she proceeded to break the chain around the statue’s neck. Panicked, Lochy ran off – leaving Joe to discover the broken chain and to think that he had damaged it and was now cursed. Lochy soon confessed all to Dorothy, but Dorothy laughed the incident off, explaining she had made the story up to wind Joe up. Believing he was cursed, however, Joe soldered the chain back on but both himself and Lochy thought the curse was definitely real when one of Dorothy’s swords fell on Joe, narrowly avoiding the delicate area between his legs. Petrified, Joe pleaded with Dorothy to exorcise the curse and she made him kneel in front of a bowl containing one of Joe's personal items - his boxer shorts - and covered in the statue’s original wrapping. But once he went out the back yard to bury the bowl, a worried Lochy admitted that she had broken the chain. When she asked Dorothy if she should go and get her undies, Dorothy erupted in laughter and admitted it was all a joke.

When Toby’s real mum Noelene died tragically in Darwin, where he had gone to stay with her only weeks before, Lochy was deeply affected by the news. She felt the need to pick some flowers for her own mother, but she fell into the fountain at the local park when some of the bricks broke as she picked some roses. This led to Dorothy deciding to run for local council in order to demolish the fountain and kicked off a long-running feud with Madge Bishop, whose grandfather the fountain was named after. Meanwhile, Lochy tried to offer her young friend support upon his return to Ramsay Street but Toby was refusing to talk to anyone. Matters came to a head when he pushed her away one day, hurting her in the process. A horrified Kerry and Joe made Toby apologise and after Toby dealt with his demons, he and Lochy became mates again.

When their parents went on an extended trip to Papa New Guinea, Lochy and Ryan moved into No.30 with Dorothy. Although Lochy loved living with her Auntie Dot, she quickly joined her parents in Port Moresby when it became clear that they were going to settle there permanently and so, Lochy bid her friends and family on Ramsay Street farewell.

Tenure
1074-1229

Biography by Moe

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