Benjamin 'Ben' Stewart

Benjamin 'dog' Stewart was a fictional character in the long running police series Blue Heelers. He was portrayed by Paul Bishop. He came into the series in the middle of season 5 as a guest before coming back to the series as a full time cast member of the show and stayed from season 5 until season 11. Initially, he was a guest actor portraying a Detective Acting-Sergeant before becoming a regular cast member of the show. He was was later demoted to Senior Constable when he was accused of murder, but this accusation was later dropped. Despite this, Sergeant Romano was dismissed, and written out of the show.

In the series, he fell for Maggie Doyle upon arriving and the two had a brief relationship. Later on in the series, Maggie chose PJ over him. Ben was depicted as having a problem with alcoholism towards the end of season 9 and the first half of season 10, but that was a short lived character trait . When he met a women in the salvation army named Marrissa Caddrock, they began a relationship together, leading to Ben eventually joining the salvation-army. Later on in the series, the two became engaged, towards the end of season 10 and season 11.

Despite personal vows of chastity, a scandal ensued when accusations of sexual relations were put forward by police colleague Susie Raynor. Once again, Ben was also cleared of these charges, having the full trust from all members of the cast. Despite the seemingly resolved issues, Marrissa eventually breaks off the engagement because of irreconcilable problems in episode 424 of season 11.

In 2003, he shot and killed a paralyzed man to protect Susie Raynor. The man was Susie's husband. Ben and Susie had a brief relationship in 2004, but like Maggie, she had feelings for another man (Evan 'Jonesy' Jones) and she broke up with Ben. Soon after, Ben left the police force and moved to Perth to be closer to his kids. Around that time, Susie left him and got to a familiar situation where Ben had to shoot someone in order to save a colleague. In this case, he couldn't find the courage to do so, and he avoided the situation. The colleague was left alone, and Ben, while disobeying and walking away from dangerous situations led to a bout of depression. This depression led Ben to the breaking point, causing conflict and leading to his leaving the force in episode 451 of season 11, only 5 episodes short of finishing the season. This gave him the distinction of being the 5th longest serving character of the series, behind Tom, Chris, P.J and Maggie.