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Character Profiles > Andrew Rodwell David Lamb, Lloyd Will

Andrew Rodwell 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023-
Lived: 26 Ramsay Street
Marital Status: Wendy
Siblings: Felix (Adoptive)
Children: Sadie
Occupation: Constable/Sergeant with Erinsborough Police

During his time working for the police in Erinsborough, Andrew Rodwell had regular encounters with the residents of Ramsay Street. In 2018, he was guarding the door of Cassius Grady’s hospital room when he was attacked in prison, and the following year, he was back at the hospital investigating, when dangerous Finn Kelly woke from a coma claiming to have amnesia, then went missing. A week later, Andrew accompanied Finn, his brother Shaun, and Dr David Tanaka, as they attempted to job Finn’s memories by taking him around Erinsborough.

In 2020, Andrew questioned Hendrix Greyson after learning that he had driven illegally, taking his friends on a trip for schoolies, later telling Hendrix that he’d be facing a fine and a driving ban. A few weeks later, Andrew and his colleague Yashvi Rebecchi investigated, after Harlow Robinson was kidnapped. After arresting Kane Jones, they realised that they had the wrong person, and it was later revealed that she had been taken by Natasha Leighton, who’d been hoping to get some ransom money from Harlow’s wealthy grandfather, Paul. The following year, Andrew and Levi Canning investigated when Roxy Willis was attacked at Erinsborough University, and arrested Brent Colefax when he went on the run, wrongly accused of robbery.

Promoted to Sergeant, Andrew became involved when Levi started to try and track down the people who’d attacked him when he was young. As he got closer to the truth, his grandmother Sheila’s house was broken into as a warning, but when Andrew and Yashvi questioned the suspects, Mitch Foster and Nelson Ryker, they made a harassment claim against Yashvi, as she had been helping out Levi by following them. Soon after, Nicolette Stone went missing, with an increasingly desperate David Tanaka trying to track her down, as she was pregnant with his baby. As Andrew explained that she was a capable adult and that the police couldn’t do anything, David started to lose his temper, with his brother Leo having to stop him. Andrew later also told Rose Walker that the person who had damaged her car had been found, after Melanie Pearson was wrongly accused of the crime.

The following month, baby Isla had seemingly been returned to David and his husband, Aaron, with Andrew investigating when she was kidnapped by mystery woman Britney Barnes. It later turned out that the baby Aaron and David had been looking after was Abigail, the daughter of Britney and Leo, as Nicolette returned with the real Isla.

Later that year, stories about Levi’s new polyamorous relationship with Amy Greenwood and Ned Willis were circulating at work, with a doctored photo of the three of them being put up on Levi’s work locker, and Andrew forced to tell him what was being said. When Levi, Amy and Ned attended the police ball together, Andrew was also in attendance with his wife, Wendy, and was forced to step in when colleague Reuben Elliott started making suggestive comments, asking all of them to leave the party as a fight almost broke out. Within a few months, Levi had moved on to a new relationship with the mysterious Freya Wozniak. When Andrew gave Levi the task of taking a police car to the city to have work done on it, he took Freya along with him. Once alone in the car, she used the police database to try and track down her missing ex-boyfriend, ,Gareth Bateman, but was caught out by a passing Roxy, and claimed that she’d just been searching for her own name on the database as a bit of fun. When she confessed this to Levi, he hoped that nobody would flag up the search and get him in trouble, and he panicked when Andrew approached him, only for it to be a complaint about the car coming back full of junk food wrappers.

When a fire broke out in a bin at Erinsborough High, Amy Greenwood’s daughter Zara became the prime suspect, having an apparent history of starting fires. Zara was actually being set up by bullies Aubrey Laing and Sadie Rodwell, Andrew’s daughter, but believing that Zara was the bad influence, Andrew attempted to keep Sadie away from her. However, matters escalated when a bigger fire at the school broke out, and Mackenzie Hargreaves became trapped, with her boyfriend Hendrix Greyson having to go in and save her. With Zara now facing serious charges, Sadie began to feel guilty about the way she and Aubrey had been behaving, eventually breaking down and confessing everything to Hendrix, admitting that Aubrey had wanted to get Zara to leave town, and she’d just been doing whatever Aubrey wanted for years. Having finally confessed to the police, Sadie was charged and expelled from the school.

After learning that 26 Ramsay Street was on the market, Andrew and Wendy decided that it would be perfect for them, and put in an offer, but their first few weeks living on the street weren’t to be easy ones. As the effects of the school fire continued to be felt, Sadie was left devastated when she found out that, due to the smoke inhalation and an underlying condition, Hendrix was going to need a lung transplant. It seemed that Mackenzie and Hendrix had forgiven Sadie for her part in the whole sorry affair, as they invited the Rodwells to their wedding. But tragedy struck only days later when Hendrix died, as his body rejected the new lung following the transplant operation. Already desperate to show how sorry she was for the fire, Sadie struggled following Hendrix’s death, writing a letter to Mackenzie, and even putting herself in danger when she tried to make up for everything by going with her now friend Zara to track down evil Corey Smythe-Jones. The plan almost ended in tragedy when Sadie was knocked out, and Corey kidnapped Zara, but she acted quickly and drugged Corey. Whilst Andrew rescued his daughter, Zara drove Corey’s car back to Ramsay Street and he was arrested.

After their difficult start on Ramsay Street, and having overstretched themselves by buying the house, the Rodwells had quickly considered selling up. Though they initially changed their minds, when a couple of other Ramsay Street residences were put up for sale, Andrew and Wendy decided to sell no. 26. However, when people then started to change their minds about going, it triggered another domino effect and almost everyone, including the Rodwell family, decided to stick around.

Over the next couple of years, Andrew developed a close friendship with Toadie Rebecchi, as well as regularly jamming with Mike Young and Karl Kennedy. But the harmony that seemed to have descended on Ramsay Street came to an abrupt end when the Varga-Murphy family - mums Remi and Cara, and their sons, JJ and Dex - came to stay. The family were temporarily staying at 24 Ramsay Street, while owners Mike and Jane were visiting the UK, and it seemed that Andrew had made an impression on JJ when he approached him to ask questions about joining the police. Andrew was pleased to help, but when JJ was later caught by Sadie inside no. 26 when nobody was home, claiming that he’d let himself in to borrow some milk, then Wendy’s watch went missing, accusations started flying. As the two families argued in the street, the Varga-Murphys announced that they had bought no. 30 and would be staying and, to make matters worse, Cara had been given the job of Building Manager at Lassiters, a job Wendy had hoped to get for herself. The following week, Wendy admitted to Andrew that she’d found the watch - the day after accusing JJ of stealing it - and that she’d been snooping into Cara’s work records, believing that there was something shoddy about her. Andrew forced her to stop obsessing about Cara, and to go to the Varga-Murphys and tell them the truth about the watch.

With Wendy’s actions causing a rift between the two families, things worsened when she brought the Linwell brothers to the Varga-Murphys’ door. Having contacted them after noticing that they’d been left off of her CV, Wendy had unwittingly told them where Cara was now living, and with Cara due to testify against them in a legal case about their unsafe work practices, they were keen to find her and shut her up. After breaking Remi’s car window and sabotaging a fan that Cara had put up at The Waterhole, they sent an envelope containing a white powder to the Varga-Murphys. Remi opened it and, concerned that it was anthrax, she sent Cara and the boys out of the house. JJ went and found Andrew, who attempted to keep everyone calm as they waited for tests to be done, as Wendy, who was forced to admit her part in the whole thing, managed to sneak into no. 30, not wanting Remi to suffer alone. When the tests showed that the substance was actually baking powder, everyone was relieved, but a huge argument broke out as Cara blamed Wendy and insisted that the two families should have nothing to do with each other.

It was then that JJ blurted out his secret - he believed that Andrew could be his biological father. JJ explained that he’d found the diary belonging to Phillipa Wade, Cara’s best friend who had died. All those years ago, Andrew, who had also known Phillipa, had offered to give her and her girlfriend a sperm sample when they’d wanted to have a baby, but she’d changed her mind when she and her girlfriend split up. Andrew also had second thoughts about the whole thing, with Wendy and a very young Sadie at home, and Phillipa had assured him that she’d destroyed the sample. However, she had given it to Cara, who, with wife Remi, had been trying to get pregnant using an anonymous American donor. Having used both samples, then fallen pregnant, Cara was unsure who the father was, but had kept this to herself, thinking that nobody would ever have to know. As Remi and Wendy struggled to deal with what they were hearing, both marriages suffered, with Wendy struggling to understand how Andrew could have done something like that. As Andrew had been giving driving lessons to JJ and getting to know him, Wendy wondered if he wanted the boy to be his son, so that he could finally have the second child that she’d been unable to give him.

When DNA test results showed that Andrew and JJ were not related, Wendy still found it difficult to forgive her husband, whilst he tried to get his head around the whole thing, he asked to see Phillipa’s diary, surprised by what he read, and then quickly going to ask Cara if she knew what was written on some of the pages that had been torn out. Cara had no idea, and when Andrew later mentioned his concerns about the diary to Wendy, she reacted badly. Andrew agreed not to mention it again, and although the arguments between them then settled down, Wendy still had a great deal of resentment over what had happened.

A few weeks later, Andrew was called out to a protest about the closure of Erinsborough High School. As the protests got out of hand and people started breaking into the school, Andrew was shocked to learn that Wendy had organised the protests, along with Sadie and Nicolette. Though the police and security managed to get everyone out of the building, Melanie Pearson was left badly injured and Nicolette was arrested and charged for her part in proceedings. Feeling that she was getting preferential treatment, Wendy marched into the police station and demanded that she also be arrested, knocking some pens off the front desk when she wasn't taken seriously. She was then finally charged and taken for questioning, but the tension remained at home. Realising just how unhappy his wife was, Andrew finally found a way to get through to her when he gave her a Christmas gift - a sketch of the two of them with Sadie. He made it clear to her that, no matter what had happened in the past, his wife and daughter were enough for him, and he didn't want another child. Wendy then admitted that she'd always felt like a failure for not being able to give him a second child, and that feeling of inadequacy had followed her around ever since. She admitted that hearing about Phillipa had brought up a lot of those old feelings, but she now knew that she had to figure out a way to fit in, and feel worthy, in her family. Having patched things up and finally reached a turning point, Andrew and Wendy decided to take a short break to the beach together.

With things back on track for Wendy and Andrew, the family soon faced some new conflict when Sadie admitted that she didn't want to take up her university place to study childcare. With Wendy determined that her daughter wasn't going to throw her life away on her planned career as a make-up artist, she attempted to put in the university application behind her daughter's back, leaving Sadie threatening to move out. When Andrew then visited Sadie at no. 32, where she'd asked if she could move in, he made her see that Wendy's behaviour was because of her own fears that she'd wasted her life. Though Andrew said that he would still support Sadie if she really wanted to move out, she admitted that she wasn't really ready, and they returned home where Wendy apologised for her behaviour, telling Sadie that she could do whatever she wanted with her life, and then announced that she was going to apply to university herself, ultimately deciding that she was going to train to be an art teacher.

When Sadie then refused her parents' offer to pay for the remainder of the course, they were pleased that she seemed to be showing such a mature approach, wanting to work and pay off the debt herself. However, when David Tanaka died suddenly, after a fight broke out between him and Eden Shaw, Sadie worked out that Paul Robinson had been responsible for sending Eden in David's direction, hoping that Eden could be the thing that split up Leo and Krista. With Paul blaming Krista for what had happened, and being very public with his accusations, Sadie finally snapped when Paul started verbally assaulting Krista during David's wake, and she blurted out what she knew. Wendy and Andrew were shocked to learn that Sadie had managed to get videos from the hotel's CCTV to prove her theory, and that she'd taken Paul's money to pay for her course, in return for her spying on Leo and Krista's relationship. They made it clear to Sadie that what she'd done was wrong, but admitted that maybe their own behaviour, with Wendy asking Sadie to take photos of Cara's CV, and Andrew not telling his wife about donating sperm to Philippa, could have made Sadie think that she was doing nothing wrong.

Just as that drama was coming to an end, the Rodwells were hit with a new problem when Andrew's brother, Felix, got in touch, due to be released from prison on parole and wanted to stay with the family. Though Andrew was happy to give Felix a chance, he was concerned about something else - when he'd told Phillipa that he'd changed his mind about donating his sperm to her, Felix had suggested that he could take his place and do it instead. Andrew knew that a party had taken place just after Felix made that suggestion, and that he hoped he'd talked Felix out of it, but the relevant pages were the ones that were missing from Phillipa's diary. Andrew decided to visit Felix and ask him directly if he'd made the donation and, when Felix claimed that he hadn't gone through with it, Andrew agreed to help him with his parole application. Felix was worried to learn, however, that the woman Phillipa had given the sperm to, Cara Varga-Murphy, was now living across the road from Andrew with the son who'd been produced from that donation, JJ. Once alone, Felix pulled a letter out of his pocket, which had been sent to him by Phillipa and contained the missing pages from the diary, which confirmed that Felix had actually gone through with accepting payment from Phillipa for his sperm.

When Felix then arrived on Ramsay Street, Andrew made it clear that he wasn't going to put up with any hint of criminial activity, and his younger brother insisted that he was going to do his best to prove himself. But when Felix then spotted that JJ had a birthmark on his back, very similar to his own, he started to panic, seeing it as proof that he was indeed the teenager's father. JJ had approached Andrew for some boxing lessons, hoping that it would keep him safe from Slade Westall and his gang who'd been terrorising Erinsborough. But when Felix helped JJ to fend off the bullies by standing up to them, using psychological means rather than physical, JJ was impressed and started turning more and more to Felix for advice. Convinced that he wasn't cut out to be a father, Felix started to make plans to skip town, confiding in his girlfriend Jools - the only person who'd stuck by him during his recent stint in prison - that he was going to rob the worksite at Eirini Rising where he'd recently scored labouring work, and then use the proceeds to take her to the Philippines.

With Andrew completely oblivious to all of the secrets his brother was keeping, he was forced to question Felix when Harolds Cafe was trashed one night. Having been with accomplice Slade planning the worksite robbery, Felix refused to give an alibi, but then JJ stepped in and claimed that he'd been with Felix, getting tips to defend himself. After almost changing his mind about his plans to leave, Felix decided to go ahead with it, but JJ overheard him talking to Jools about the robbery, later offering to step in and help when Slade was arrested. After Holly Hoyland found a map of the Eirini Rising site in a book that Felix had given her, she noticed things written on it which made her suspicious and showed it to Andrew, who then caught Felix and JJ in the act. Unfortunately, a panicked JJ reversed their van into some scaffolding, which fell on Andrew, leaving him in hospital with concussion and broken ribs. As Andrew recovered, JJ came to him to confess, while Wendy tried to work out where Felix had disappeared to. As she checked his bags, she found the missing pages from Phillipa Wade's diary, which confirmed that Felix had donated the sperm that she'd given to Cara. Felix explained that he and JJ had the same birthmark in the same place on their back, and Wendy went to Andrew with this information. They realised that they had to tell Remi and Cara, who were stunned by the news, particularly concerned by the bond JJ had been unwittingly forming with the man.

While Remi and Cara made Felix promise that he would have nothing to do with JJ, even if the teenager tried to contact him, Andrew also visited his brother, saying that he wanted nothing more to do with him. Felix was then taken away to prison and, as the Rodwells and Varga-Murphys tried to come to terms with their new connection, JJ struggled to make sense of it all. After weeks of acting up and having his letters to Felix returned, JJ managed to persuade Andrew to take him to the prison for a visit, where Felix made it clear that he didn't want a son in his life. Andrew then told Felix never to contact him again.

As well as his newly-discovered nephew, Andrew was also finding it difficult to understand daughter Sadie, after finding out that she was dating Byron Stone. As well as worrying about the age difference, Andrew was also concerned about the difference in experience between them, as the slightly older Byron had previously been a male escort. Andrew immediately took against the relationship, even going as far as warning Byron about the tyres, having it marked as unroadworthy when it wasn't. With his concerns growing about dating a younger woman who still lived at home, this was the final straw and Byron suggested to a devastated Sadie that they should take a break from each other. However, after seeing how upset Sadie was, and following his stint in hospital, Andrew apologised, promising to keep his nose out, and getting the unroadworthy warning removed from Byron's car. Sadie and Byron then got back together, and, apart from a small mix-up when he and Wendy mistakenly thought that their daughter was about to get engaged, Andrew kept his promise and left them alone.

When Wendy mentioned that she was struggling to make friends on her uni course, Andrew encouraged her to be herself and just try talking to people. This worked, but when Wendy's new friends believed that she wasn't that much older than them, she didn't correct them. She started secretly wearing Sadie's clothes and acting younger, with Cara the only other person who was aware of what was going on, when she spotted her at the university. As Cara had started an IT course and was too embarrassed to tell her family, in case she failed, they agreed to keep each other's secrets. When Cara found out that Wendy had agreed to attend a traffic light party, and was allowing her friends to believe that she was single, she encouraged her to be honest with Andrew. Wendy decided against this, as she was then asked to host the party and feared that she'd be cancelled by her new friends if she let them down. After encouraging Andrew to go on a fishing trip, and telling Sadie about a music festival, she managed to get them both out of the house but when those plans fell through, Andrew and Sadie returned to find chaos at no. 26.

As the guests left, Andrew tried to understand as Wendy told him how she'd been mistaken for someone in their 20s and had just gone along with it. Although he saw the funny side, he was less impressed when Cara let slip that Wendy had also been pretending to be single. Struggling to make sense of it all, Andrew went to work and when he didn't return home at the usual time, Wendy panicked and went to the police station, making a fool of herself when she found out that he was at the hotel, wrongly thinking he'd booked himself in when he was actually breaking up a fight there. They sat down for a chat, but a tearful Wendy found it difficult to explain why she'd done what she'd done. Andrew decided that they should speak in the morning, promising that he'd be home once he was finished at work. The next morning, Wendy told Andrew how she'd been worried that people would reject her if they knew that she was a boring middle aged mum, which in turn made her feel like she was too old to be experiencing such insecurities. Andrew assured her that he and Sadie loved her just the way she was, and it seemed that things were back on track for the Rodwells.

However, as Wendy was then offered the university's Gatsford Mentorship, and it was suggested by another student that it was just a diversity PR stunt, she found it difficult to know whether to accept or not. With Andrew telling her to ignore the comments and take the opportunity, Wendy started turning to new friend Quinn Lao for advice, believing that he understood the way that the casual racism made her feel different to others. Wendy ultimately decided to accept the mentorship, but her doubts remained as she began her teaching placements and she continued to turn to Quinn for advice. Though Andrew was understanding about the friendship, and why Wendy needed it, he was concerned when Sadie came to him, convinced that there was more than just friendship between her mum and Quinn. As Andrew then started looking at some photos from Wendy's mentorship presentation, he noticed the look that Quinn was giving Wendy and realised that Sadie might be right. As the Rodwells hosted a party for Cara's 40th birthday, Andrew confronted Wendy and she admitted that Quinn had made a pass at her during the traffic light party weeks earlier, but had backed off when he found out that she was married. She explained that she'd continued the friendship, knowing how Quinn felt about her, and that they'd had another moment of connection whilst he was helping her out at the bar. Though nothing had happened, Andrew reacted badly to these revelations, losing his temper when Quinn turned up at the party and throwing him out.

After admitting to Toadie that he felt like he'd overreacted, Andrew met with Wendy, who told him about her insecurities. They agreed to try and work things out, but were soon distracted from their own problems when they heard that Felix had been stabbed during a brawl at the prison. Though relieved when Felix made it out of surgery, Andrew was reluctant to see him, so Wendy decided to go along, hoping to keep the lines of communication open and fearing that Andrew might end up regretting cutting his brother out. Andrew decided that Wendy was right and spoke to his brother, admitting that it did seem like something about him was different this time. After learning that Felix had been responsible for saving another prisoner during the brawl, rather than being the one who'd caused it, Andrew helped Felix to find somewhere to stay after he was given early release, and was also surprised to learn that Felix had found faith during his latest prison stint.

As he tried to cope with his brother still being around, Andrew also tried to fix his marriage, offering to go along to a meditation class with Wendy. Sadie was happy to see her parents laughing together for the first time in a while, but things quickly started to go wrong again when Byron spotted Wendy with Quinn. After Byron told Sadie, she got her parents together to talk about things, with Wendy explaining that Quinn was struggling with his family and had begged her to meet him so he could talk about things. Andrew accepted this, though he was clearly uncomfortable about it, so when a siege broke out at the Waterhole a couple of weeks later, he was horrified to realise that Wendy had been hiding in the pub office all night with Quinn. This revelation caused Andrew to freeze briefly before ordering officers to storm the building and stop gunman Justin Ashton and when Wendy emerged, expecting a warm greeting from her husband, he simply asked her why she'd been with Quinn. Upset at his reaction, Wendy explained that a desperate Quinn had tricked her into the meeting, leading her to believe he was her new mentor, and then they'd been forced to hide together. Though Wendy suggested that she could get an intervention order taken out against Quinn, Andrew told her that she was the problem, leading to a huge divide in the marriage and Wendy telling Andrew that she no longer trusted him. With communication completely breaking down between the couple, Andrew found himself struggling at work too, snapping at junior colleagues and then physically assaulting a man who'd been brought in for drug dealing. When Andrew's senior, Tony Thompson, witnessed this, already unhappy that Andrew had refused counselling and time off after the siege, he told him that he was suspended.

Feeling that he had little left to lose, Andrew agreed to go to marriage counselling with Wendy, and although they made a little progress, Andrew was left with the feeling that he had only heard Wendy's side of the story over what happened with Quinn. After tricking Sadie into helping him, Andrew managed to get Quinn's number and arranged a meeting, but a worried Quinn contacted Wendy and told her what was going on. Furious with her husband, Wendy then fled to stay with her parents for a few nights, leaving Sadie to confront her dad about his actions. Andrew was left worried when Wendy then failed to return for her birthday, and she then called to explain that she needed some time on her own and had taken a mentorship placement at a school in Murrayville, several hours away. Feeling that her dad was to blame for the whole mess, Sadie went to stay with Byron at no. 32, leaving Andrew completely alone at home.

As he prepared to return to work, Andrew also raised the possibility of Felix moving in with him. Having proven that he was a changed man, Felix was slowly being accepted by the people of Erinsborough, and the Varga-Murphys were also accepting of the idea of him moving onto the street. JJ, however, quickly noticed that his family always seemed to face problems when Felix was around and, for the sake of Remi and Cara's marriage, he asked his dad to leave town. Having just moved in, Felix listened to his son and, wanting to do right by him, he agreed and took a job as a groundskeeper at a church away from Erinsborough. With Sadie deciding to make no. 32 her permanent home, and with Wendy suggesting that he use the time on his own to find his true self, Andrew decided to go on a road trip, slowly making his way up to Murrayville, fishing and camping along the way.