Diver Dan is a fictional character on the popular Australian television drama SeaChange

SeaChange

SeaChange was a popular Australian television show that ran for 39 episodes from 1998 to 2001 on the ABC. It was created by Andrew Knight and Deborah Cox and starred Sigrid Thornton, David Wenham, William McInnes, John Howard, Tom Long and Kerry Armstrong...

, portrayed by David Wenham

David Wenham

David Wenham is an Australian actor who has appeared in movies, television series and theatre productions. He is known in Hollywood for his roles as Faramir in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, Carl in Van Helsing and Dilios in 300 and Neil Fletcher in Australia...

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Personal history

Daniel ‘Diver Dan’ Della Bosca spent his early life in an unnamed country town, and moved to Pearl Bay approximately twelve years before the series began. His father was an abusive alcoholic and his mother abandoned the family when Dan was seven years old as she was no longer able to put up with the violence (1.11). For many years, Dan felt guilty about this, believing his mother left because he did not clean his room when she told him to, and was an otherwise badly behaved child. This guilt is the sources of many of Dan’s emotional issues and will occasionally emerge when he gets publicly and embarrassingly drunk. Following his mother's death, Dan kept her ashes in a beautiful old vase until Laura convinced him to let her go. According to Dan, the only useful thing his father ever taught him was how to box, presumably something he was often forced to do in self-defence. Dan can sometimes be defensive about his childhood and family. For example, at one stage he told Laura his father was a foreign diplomat and his mother a concert violinist with no arms. Not much is known about Dan's education, but it is unlikely that he attended university, preferring instead to travel the world. He also has a police record due to his habit of driving a boat without a license and mooring his boat illegally. Dan typically refuses to pay these fines and will work them off in Port Deakin prison instead.

Personality

Dan is a perennial drifter, and in his own words has spent half his life travelling overseas. He speaks Spanish, Japanese, and Italian in various degrees of proficiency. He has the nickname "Diver" and Meridith Monahan is often heard talking about him using that nickname. It is seen in the first episode, where Laura is asking for directions. She asks, "So can I call you Dan?" and his reply is "No, you can call me Diver." Dan’s home is the boatshed which also serves as a kind of café. The coffee machine is excellent, but the townsfolk can't rely on getting much else from the establishment; the grilled cheese and ham sandwiches come without cheese. Later it's revealed his ex wife, Dorothea, used to make them; the emotional scarring from that relationship has meant that the locals steer clear of ordering them. Diver Dan often feigns ineptness at filling simple orders. Despite this, Dan is an accomplished chef who works one night a week at the Tropical Star Hotel and sometimes gives cooking classes (although seemingly only to Laura). His hobbies include fishing, scuba-diving, playing in a band with Angus, Kevin, and Bucket, playing Scrabble (where he is an outrageous cheat), listening to his extensive vinyl collection, and driving the ferry from Pearl Bay to Port Deakin for the school kids. Described by Laura - when angry - as a "lethargic, unambitious slob", he has never held down a real job and doesn't seem to have any stable goals in life.

Incredibly lackadaisical and laconic, Dan has worked hard to hide his wounded soul. Although good mannered and friendly most of the time, he is rather sensitive and is known to have a bad temper which will occasionally flare up. He can also be quite evasive, stubborn, and impulsive. Laura accuses him of pretending to be a lot less intelligent and sophisticated that he actually is in order to fit in at Pearl Bay. According to Meredith, Dan is as pretentious as anyone else but shows it in the opposite way: he hates anyone in any position of authority. One of his most loved pastimes is fishing at high tide in the early hours of the morning in the water under the floorboards of his boatshed, something he shares with almost no-one.

Relationships

Several years before the series, Dan was married to a woman named Dorothy who left him for her female personal trainer (1.07). This was something he had never told anybody before he admitted it to Laura. Their marriage wasn't a very happy one - though there were some fantastic bits in amongst it - and Dorothy's departure caused Dan to almost give up on relationships for life. However, Laura's arrival at Pearl Bay and their subsequent friendship changed this. Most of the town believed Laura and Dan were in a romantic relationship months before they first kissed.