IT'S written in tiny letters in invisible ink in the margins of a script. If you're a soap actor, every once and a while you will be required to "go on a journey".

Sometimes, usually in extreme cases, these journeys involve actual travel. Pamela Sue Martin - Fallon Carrington in The Colbys - travelled through deep space when, at the end of a particularly preposterous episode, she was vacuumed up by a UFO and abducted by aliens.

Patrick Duffy - Bobby Ewing in Dallas - travelled through even deeper space. This is the recuperation zone for actors who mistakenly think they can hear movie producers calling. Even more preposterousness is required to get them back into their soaps. In Duffy's case this involved pretending an entire season's absence had been just a bad dream.

But mostly "journey" is a metaphor for character development... and a euphemism for "the scriptwriters are bored with you".

The flights of fictional fancy undertaken by Michael Beckley and Abi Tucker, right - two Australians who got their breaks on soaps and have now pitched up in Edinburgh - were small. So, compared to the everyday stories of dysfunctional, murderous, shoulder-padded American dynasties, were their soaps. Nevertheless, they just got on and did the journeys. That's the Aussie way.

"I loved every minute of Home and Away," says Beckley, 42, who played Rhys Sutherland. "I was the guy who married the same woman twice, and whose daughter married the man who raped her sister. Hey, stuff happens. Well, it does in Summer Bay."

Tucker, 33, started out in Heartbreak High, which was a soap, and graduated to The Secret Life of Us, which wasn't, but involved her in the soap-style transformation of Miranda Lang from straight (who slept with every one of her flatmates) to gay.

"That wasn't too unbelievable, was it?" she says of her time on Melbourne's answer to Friends. "Miranda was an out-of-work actress. There was a realness to Secret Life. And it came to a natural end. That's the sign of a great show, I think. It exists for a period of time in the universe."

There is nothing implausible about the Festival Fringe's demands on the pair, however. They're appearing in Breakfast With Jonny Wilkinson, a play which celebrates one of Australia's three great loves. Not beer. Not Vegemite. The other one - sport.

Chris England's follow-up to An Evening With Gary Lineker, it's the same set-up: group of friends gather to watch a great sporting event on TV, in this case the 2003 Rugby World Cup between England and Australia. On-field dramas spark conflict off it as a small-time rugger outfit is engulfed in power struggles and sex-scandal blackmail.

"Everyone has an ulterior motive," says Tucker, whose character, the luscious, pouting Lena, slips naked into the showers and seduces the wrong player by mistake. Lena is colluding with Matt (Beckley), the less than shy and retiring team coach plotting a takeover of the club.

"Matt is your typical loudmouth Aussie sports fan," says Beckley. "When I came out with lines like 'You shouldn't invent games if you can't play them' during the warm-up shows in London, I was booed." In Edinburgh, he's been cheered.

Neither Beckley nor Tucker is sports-mad. Well, in a country where the national sport is "winning", there has to be a couple of non-believers. But they're proud of Australia's sportsmanship.

"I think we're better losers than the English," says Beckley, who witnessed the fall-out from England's football failure in Germany while preparing for Edinburgh. "An Aussie will be upset at a bad result but then he'll be like: 'Well, you guys did actually play better. Now do you fancy a beer?'"

Tucker's route into acting was fairly conventional. She grew up in metropolitan Sydney and, at 20, won Australia's New Faces belting out power-ballad covers.

Beckley was the farmer's son from Sommersby, about two hours north of Sydney, who shocked his parents when he announced he wanted to act. "I patted the horses and said goodbye to the cows. When the Underground threw me out at Piccadilly Circus I was like: 'We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto.'"

That was 22 years ago. He's more streetwise now, but still retains the optimism that is the Aussie calling-card. Tucker has it, too, and still dreams of making it in music.

"The next play I hope to do has got echoes of this one," says Beckley. "I'm this Aussie who thinks he should feel guilty about our great weather, great food and great beaches. But he can't quite stop himself sticking it to the English as if to say: 'You sent us out there all those years ago - look what's become of the place!'"

Breakfast With Jonny Wilkinson, Udderbelly (0870-745 3083), until August 28, 2pm