As a nation, for almost four decades, we have collectively lived next door to the Ramsays, the Robinsons and the Clarkes, and later the Mitchells, Kennedys, Rebecchis, Starks and Cannings. That’s how good neighbours, goes the theme tune, become good friends.

But after almost 9000 episodes, the long-running television program Neighbours – and the friendship we have with it – will come to an end this August. Its final storylines, filmed at Melbourne’s Nunawading Studios, are still under wraps. With the ending of the show, the book closes on a relatively unique cultural document: a five-nights-a-week soap opera which captured, at every moment, the social mores, everyday conversations and even fashion trends of the nation. It’s all there, from cable knits to kaftans.

Caught, in the end, in a perfect storm of declining Australian audience and changing business models, it could not survive. “Television comes in waves, and styles, but we survived because as with nature, adapt or die, and we adapted,” actress Jackie Woodburne said at the show’s final media event on Wednesday. “We were mindful of what was happening in the wider culture, what people were going to through and we told stories to reflect that.”

The show’s final scenes were filmed earlier this month, and included a slew of guest appearances from past favourites, including Paul Keane (who played Des Clarke), Peter O’Brien (Shane Ramsay), Ian Smith (Harold Bishop), Daniel MacPherson (Joel Samuels), Mark Little (Joe Mangel) and Natalie Bassingthwaighte (Izzy Hoyland).

Three of the show’s most successful alumni – Guy Pearce (Mike Young), Jason Donovan (Scott Robinson) and Kylie Minogue (Charlene Mitchell-Robinson) – have also filmed scenes for the show’s final episodes.

But before the curtain falls for the last time, a mixture of current and past cast members were given a final press parade, at Nunawading Studios. Australian television is not typically nostalgic, but as sacred sites go, it is up there. Prisoner was filmed there, along with Matlock Police, the doomed Holiday Island and the 1960s pop show Kommotion.

Since its premiere on March 18, 1985, like most soap operas, Neighbours′ storylines dominated the national conversation. And by any measure, it’s been a busy 37 years: 8903 episodes, more than 180,000 scenes, 100 hostage situations, 35 natural disasters, 115 car crashes, 64 deaths, 40 weddings, 17 births and 15 people who have, in the truest soap opera tradition, come back from the dead.

Among its most remembered moments: the pre-Will Smith slap heard around the world, when Susan (Jackie Woodburne) slapped her cheating husband Karl (Alan Fletcher). As with many such cultural moments, it resonated because it spoke to the shared experience of the show’s female audience.