by Kaye Dee

I was so excited last month to talk about the first Blue Streak test launch that I completely forgot to mention another huge event occurring in Australia in June — the first tour Down Under by The Beatles! Yes, the Fab Four made a whirlwind visit to Australia and New Zealand last month and Beatlemania took the country by storm. Mr. Kenn Brodziak, the local promoter, made a lucky investment when he booked The Beatles last July to tour here, because they weren’t anywhere near as famous then as they are now. The newspapers are even saying that this tour has been the most successful event in Australian show business history.

The Beatles, arriving in Adelaide

The band arrived in Australia from Hong Kong on 11 June. An unscheduled touchdown in Darwin in the early hours of the morning was a taste of things to come, with 400 fans and journalists turning out to greet them. Unfortunately, when their plane arrived in Sydney it was bitterly cold and pouring rain (remember, it’s winter right now in this part of the world): in fact, the rain was so heavy that I could not even get out the door to go to the university — I’d have been soaked to the skin before I got to the bus stop! Oddly enough, there hasn’t been a drop of rain since and the long-range weather forecaster Mr. Lennox Walker is now predicting a drought over the next year.

To tell the truth, I didn’t mind being stuck at home because of the downpour, since it meant that Faye and I could watch the live broadcast of The Beatles arrival at Kingsford Smith Airport. There is no morning television in Australia, but both Channel 9 and Channel 7, our two commercial stations, had outside broadcast vans at the airport to provide a direct telecast. The pictures were even relayed live to Melbourne via the new co-axial cable. It shows how much everyone wants to see this amazing pop group that has taken the world by storm! There were thousands of fans at Sydney airport, braving the awful weather to catch a glimpse of the Fab Four as they struggled with umbrellas in the driving wind and rain.

The Fab Three and Jimmie Nichols braving the rain in Sydney

I say the Fab Four, but when the band arrived in Sydney, it was actually the Fab Three and a ring-in. Ringo Starr had been hospitalised with tonsillitis and pharyngitis before the start of the tour and his place was being taken by British drummer Jimmie Nicol. Ringo wasn’t able to join the tour until their first concert in Melbourne on 16 June. 

The Beatles with Jimmie Nichols

The Beatles travelled to Adelaide on a chartered plane for their first concert and when they arrived, more than 250,000 people lined the route between Adelaide Airport and the city. According to my WRE friends, this huge turnout was a ‘thank you’ to recognise that the promoter had added Adelaide to the tour schedule in response to a petition signed by 80,000 fans. I’ve read that this is the largest crowd to turn out for the Beatles so far, anywhere in the world! There’s certainly been nothing like it in Australia before: I even heard a commentator on the radio say that the eruption of Beatlemania in Australia has been more intense than anywhere else in the world so far! Mind you, not everyone has welcomed the Beatles so enthusiastically. In Brisbane, where their plane arrived at midnight to be greeted by 8,000 fans, a handful of anti-Beatles protesters threw eggs at the boys, which I think was a pretty stupid gesture.

There's Jimmie Nichol again

The Beatles played 20 shows in Australia — in Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane and everywhere they were greeted by enormous crowds of screaming fans. There were a lot of reports in the press about ‘hundreds’ of fans in Adelaide and Melbourne being injured in the crowds, although Mr. Brian Epstein, The Beatles’ manager said in response to a question at the Canberra Press Club that he believes these reports to be greatly exaggerated. The police took them seriously in Sydney, though, and more than 600 officers of the Special B Squad were on duty around their concerts and other appearances in the city, to prevent major disturbances.

Faye and I managed to get tickets to one of the Sydney concerts (yes, I admit we’re fans, even if we might be a little bit older and less-inclined to scream than most of the audience). The tickets cost us 37 shillings ($3.70) each, which certainly wasn’t cheap, but it was well worth it to see the Fab Four performing live. It was just as well that we could see them, because I’ve got to say that we could hardly hear them over the screaming of the young fans. It was even more hysterical than at the Frank Sinatra concert I went to in Sydney in 1961! 

Screaming fans in Sydney

The concert itself was really entertaining. The first half of the show consisted of four Australian support acts, including Johnny Devlin (something of a favourite of mine) and Johnny Chester, who are well-known Australian singers. The local acts performed for about 45 minutes, then, after the interval, The Beatles came on for the second half of the concert. In half an hour, they gave us 10 songs from their first two albums, as well as Can’t Buy Me Love from their ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ album, which has just been released in Australia this month. Of course, I would have loved them to perform more songs, but, as they did two shows every night (one at 6pm and the second at 8:30pm), there wasn’t time for any more. I’m told that the concerts had the same format in each city and it must have been incredibly exhausting for all the performers.

On stage at Sydney

On 18 June, while The Beatles were in Sydney, Paul McCartney celebrated his 22nd birthday, with a party thrown by the Daily Mirror newspaper. After the Sydney concerts, the Beatles made an eight-day tour of New Zealand, where they performed 12 concerts in four cities. 10,000 fans saw them off from the airport in Sydney. There was an article in the newspaper saying that Johnny Devlin actually helped to solve major sound problems at the concerts in Wellington, which had annoyed John Lennon so much that he threatened to cancel the remainder of the tour. Fortunately that didn’t happen and the Fab Four were back in Australia at the end of June for their final concerts in Brisbane.

The Beatles, off to New Zealand

The Beatles tour has been a major event in Australia, with more media coverage than just about anything apart from a Royal Tour! I suspect that it’s going to have a big impact on music and teenage culture in this country. I also suspect that these talented young men from Britain are destined to go on to achieve great things in the world of music and entertainment.

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