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Guest Character Profiles > Erin Salisbury Elise Jansen

Having missed out on a place on Erinsborough Hospital's surgical programme, Dr Rhys Lawson refused to give up on his dream and, growing desperate, decided that the best idea would be to try and get one of the successful applicants removed from the programme, so he could take their place. Having failed to convince Robbie O'Brien to quit, Rhys moved on to Erin Salisbury, and learnt from her friend, nurse Aiden Foster, that she'd recently come out of a long-term relationship. Using this knowledge, Rhys engineered a meeting with her and started flirting, encouraging her to open up and making her think that he'd been through a similar experience.

Though Erin tried to insist that she wanted to focus on her work at the hospital, Rhys pushed her into having dinner with him and convinced her to stay the night, resetting the alarm on her phone so that she was late the next morning and received an official warning. When Rhys' neighbour Kate Ramsay realised what he was up to, she spoke to Erin and explained everything, and Rhys received a slap. He followed her outside and lied that Kate was his jealous, possessive ex, and would do anything to stop him from moving on. Erin fell for his lies and started spending more time with Rhys, as he helped her to study and again made dinner for them. When he opened a bottle of champagne, he spilt some on her sleeve and, at work the next day, Aiden noticed her smelling of alcohol and helped her find some scrubs to change into, causing her to be late for surgical training again. At the same time, Rhys confided in Dr Karl Kennedy that he was concerned that a colleague had a problem with alcohol, and when Karl then overheard Aiden talking about Erin smelling of booze earlier, he went to Jessica Girdwood, the head of the programme, with his concerns.

With her recent personal problems, lateness and now the rumours of a drink problem, Erin was told to take a few days off, but, furious with the way she'd been treated, she decided to resign. Bumping into Kate at Lassiter's a few days later, Erin realised that she'd been conned and that Rhys had taken her place on the surgical programme. Suddenly without any responsibilities in her life, Erin began to think about leaving town and travelling around Australia and Kate, in a similar position in her own life, decided to go with her.

Only hours after arriving in Port Douglas, Erin was taken ill and forced to stay in the backpackers hostel, while Kate went out exploring and managed to lose her phone. The phone was discovered on the beach by Dominic Emmerson, who used it to play games with Kate, and when the pair eventually found each other, he asked her on a date. Kate continued to avoid Dominic, until Erin made her see that she needed to loosen up if she was ever going to enjoy their trip. Erin, meanwhile, quickly found herself involved with barman Luke Malicki, even agreeing to hang around in Queensland for a couple of extra weeks so that he could raise the money to join Erin and Kate on their travels to Asia.

In the week that followed, Kate's Uncle Paul suddenly turned up in Port Douglas, desperate to speak to Kate about her younger sister Sophie, who was in danger of being placed in foster care unless Kate came home. Though suspicious of Paul at first, as he had lost his wallet and had no ID, Erin eventually realised that he was telling the truth and told him about the boat trip that Kate had been planning for that day. Paul finally tracked Kate down, but failed to talk her into going back home, and she instead made plans to go to Vietnam with Dominic. With Erin and Luke heading off on a separate adventure, the girls said their goodbyes, planning to meet up in Thailand at a later date. But following a heartfelt email from Sophie - actually written by Sophie's friend Callum - Kate had second thoughts and went back to Erinsborough.

A couple of weeks later, Erin and Kate had a catch-up on Skype, with Kate undecided about whether to leave and go travelling again, eventually telling Erin that she was going to stay in Erinsborough, as she'd realised that she had feelings for her friend Kyle Canning and was going to try to win him back.

Trivia Notes
• Elise Jansen previously appeared in one episode in 2010 as Zeke's uni friend Alicia Berry

Episodes Featured
6313, 6314, 6315, 6320, 6321, 6322, 6325, 6327, 6331, 6332, 6336, 6339, 6341, 6350

Biography by Steve

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